For the Liberal Democrat Davey – a key speaker at the Telegraph Hay Festival, opening next week – is the greenest member of the Cabinet, if past history is anything to go by…….one of the few top politicians to have entered public affairs through the green movement…….“I have been a long-term believer in the (green) agenda,”……He was particularly influenced by Jonathon Porritt,…..
With that background how could we have expected anything sensible? Or even anything that will keep the lights on?
Reform, he says, is needed because “the current market is totally biased towards gas” and would cause many more power stations using the fuel to be built, emitting carbon dioxide and causing “massive reliance on imported gas” from unstable parts of the world.
What about shale gas? “The Spectator and the Right wing of the Tory party try to make out that shale gas is the answer, but I am afraid the evidence does not bear it out. We had Shell and Centrica into Number 10 with the Prime Minister and they were saying that if they exploited all the shale gas they think is there, we will be talking about 5 per cent of our needs, maybe 10 per cent.”
Stupid twat didn\’t even bother to ask Cuadrilla, the people who have found the damn shale gas.
And Centrica….aren\’t they the successors to British Gas? You know, the people who drilled Blackpool a couple of decades ago, said there was nothing there and then let Cuadrilla take over the licence? And, err, the people who own the contracts to import lots of high priced Russian gas, linked to the oil price? And also own several fields producing regular natural gas, the profits from which would go down if there was a shale gas boom?
And Shell? Buyers of shale projects elsewhere, likely buyers of Cuadrilla etc if only prices would come down a bit?
Isn’t asking the people who own the deposit likely to get as accurate and impartial an answer as asking the Blackpool branch of the Greens ?
I would have guessed Shell would have given a fairly decent independent account of the prospects.
Surely the point though is that 10% of UK energy needs is not to be sniffed at.
I own shares in Falklands Oil & Gas.
FOGL’s estimates of potential oil deposits would put the share price at £50. However the market currently values it at 86p.
Sometimes asking the people most personally involved in a project isn’t the most sensible course. Just sayin’.
“…try to make out that shale gas is the answer, but I am afraid the evidence does not bear it out….. we will be talking about 5 per cent of our needs, maybe 10 per cent.”
And the percentage likely to be met by wind power? Yet, apparently, wind is the answer. Logic not a strong point then……
“one of the few top politicians to have entered public affairs through the green movement”
Which possibly tells you more about the set of top politicians (Clegg?) than it does about the man’s knowledge of energy systems
Unless the figures have changed dramatically recently, I believe that 5-10% of our gas usage is more then we import from Russia. Would we rather all that money went to a UK firm, or Putin’s mates?
Centrica have also recently pulled out of their licence in South Wales for coal bed methane and shale gas
Shinsei67 – “Surely the point though is that 10% of UK energy needs is not to be sniffed at.”
Especially if you compare it to non-hydro renewables.
Now, is the reason why Centrica rejected the Blackpool scheme and pulled out of South Wales:
1) because one of the world’s leading gas exploration companies does’t know what it’s talking about; or
2) because the scheme’s totally uneconomic and – like most small-cap resources companies since stock markets began – Caudrilla’s somewhere on the “wildly overoptimistic” to “actually fraudulent” end of the scale?
Clue: 2.
because one of the world’s leading gas exploration companies does’t know what it’s talking about
I’m not referring this particular case, but cases where major oil companies have either dismissed or abandoned a prospect only to find another company find an elephant in the same spot are legion. You’d like to think these companies know what they’re doing when it comes to exploration, but there is one hell of a lot of guesswork and no small amount of luck involved.
do Centrica have such a great record of finding gas? I thought they mainly bought up already discovered deposits.
We can all speculate endlessly (and pointlessly) but the major point is that nobody knows.
And there is only one way to find out; to start exploitation.
It also seems clear that, even if we don’t have huge resources, other countries do (unless you think that North America is geologically unique). So shale will put downwards pressure on world gas (and energy) prices for the next few decades at least.
Oh, I wholly agree on the “we should be exploring” point; sod the whinging farmers.
But there is a strong tendency, illustrated by Tim’s post a few days ago, to say “we’ve got enough shale gas to cover the next 50 years of electricity, so we don’t need to arrange alternative supplies”, based on the exploration companies’ most optimistic estimates. Because people like the idea that everything will be OK for cheap, and that we don’t need to do anything difficult.
Which, if it turns out nice, will be nice. But if we reach the point in 15 years where North Sea gas has run out, about 10% of the shale gas volumes that the bubble-companies are currently touting actually turn out to be viable, and the same’s true for shale reserves worldwide, then we’ll be distinctly fucked.
(well, you will. This is one of several reasons why I intend to have an Australian passport by then, since solar PV will be economic here within five years).