Lower quality gas will be pumped into Britain’s homes to help boost North Sea production and ease the energy crisis.
Officials have agreed to relax rules so that gas with a lower calorific value can be allowed into the transmission system to be mixed with other supplies.
It should enable drillers to extract some gas which is otherwise left in the ground, although the measure will not be enacted until April 2025.
A spokesman for the department for energy security and net zero said the move was “a positive change contributing towards the UK’s energy independence”.
Why not go fracking?
Better to leave the shale gas in the ground as a strategic reserve.
Then when WW3 breaks out we can have our own independent energy source.
Though given that it seems to be about to start, maybe we should be setting up the equipment now …
Alternatively, if WW3 doesn’t start, we can sit on the shale gas until oil and gas prices hit £500 a barrel and then coin it in. Might as well use someone else’s while it’s cheap.
Given that there’s circa 100 years worth of shale gas under our feet, why wait?, we’re running out of thi gs to export to oay for imports as we’ve eaten the seed corn of technical excellence in too many fields already.
It’s still a resource, only becomes a reserve once the wells are drilled & field extent is known.
It’ll take 5+years to drill all the wells required, by which time any WW3 will be over.
Hold on a second. If the gas is of lower calorific value, then the consumer will need to burn more of it to achieve the same results.
This is like those twats in the EU who mandated 3kw kettles. Haven’t these fuckers heard of thermodynamics ?
You could also frack all the coal seams – I understand you have about 500 years worth still there. This’d get rid of any gas that might cause an explosion if you go back to mining the stuff.
Then you can start to burn the coal underground, to produce CO, H2 and of course lots of CO2.
Meanwhile you boost up your ability to build nukes. So your breeder reactors can burn all the U238 as well as the U235. By then you can perfect your ability to burn thorium as well. You can have people pay you to take away all that horrid radioactive waste, so you make a profit on your fuel purchases.
You can tell I like to read scifi, can’t you?
. . . then the consumer will need to burn more of it to achieve the same results.
That’s the plan. The consumer pays by volume, not calories. Gas will become even more expensive compared to whatevs. Maybe shorten the lives of boilers, too.
pjf –
“The consumer pays by volume, not calories. ”
No. Look at your gas bill. It contains a calorific value/cubic metre. Which is then used to calculate your kWh consumption.
Perhaps it will shorten boiler life. It will have to run for longer to produce the same amount of kW output.
Not unless they’ve changed it PJF. There is a calorific gas conversion in the billing calculation. It’s a bit over-average, but it is there.
Duh. Thanks for the reminder / correction. Obviously I need to work harder on my morning conspiracy theories.
This is like those twats in the EU who mandated 3kw kettles. Haven’t these fuckers heard of thermodynamics ?
Probably not. Most politicos are PpE grads.
Bogan: it was 300 years of coal when we studied energy sources in Chemistry at school in 1982ish. Technical advances? More efficient consumption will make it last longer.
““The consumer pays by volume, not calories. ””
No. Look at your gas bill. It contains a calorfic value/cubic metre. Which is then used to calculate your kWh consumption.
Yes Correct, but how do you the purchaser measure the calorific value? You can’t. (easily) My friend always does his own meter readings, keeps track and checks against his bill. Whenever he’s found a discrepancy they always say the calorific value changed for that month/quarter.
I’m wondering what ‘lower calorific value’ gas is. Obviously not pure CH4. What else is in there? CO2? H2O? N2? Not He as that’s too valuable to leave in there. Ethane would boost it so it can’t be that.
‘it was 300 years of coal when we studied energy sources in Chemistry at school in 1982ish’
Thanks jgh. My figure came from a vague memory of a newspaper article.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/
Also, there will be some He. It’s expensive to collect out. So low levels – 0,1% and so on – are just left in.