Cold weather threatens British gas supplies
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Independent Minds
The UK faces gas supply problems if the cold snap continues, a leading energy consultancy warned today. The National Grid issued a Gas Balancing Alert asking large industrial customers to ease off on fuel use earlier this week - the first in almost four years. And as supply struggles to keep up with record demand, the security of the UK’s energy supply is under threat, according to McKinnon and Clarke (M&C;).
The unusually cold weather exposes the UK's underinvestment in gas storage facilities while it could rely on gas production from now-dwindling North Sea reserves. " While gas importing countries like Germany have 4 months’ supply stored in reserve, the UK has only 3 weeks," David Hunter, an analyst at M&C;, said. "The Government is acting as if the UK is still a gas exporter - unfortunately this is no longer the case and the truth is we rely on Norway, Russia and the Middle East to keep the lights on, our homes heated and businesses operating."
Notwithstanding acknowledgements in the industry that more storage is needed, there was scepticism about claims from the Conservative Party that the UK's facilities contain only enough gas for eight more days. Sources said there are more like 15 days’ worth left.
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Comments
Why not burn coal, you have lots of it, it is cheap, it is easy to handle, it is local and it keep money in the country? Oh, yes, it creates CO2 and we all know what that does.
Creating CO2 lowers the price of imported Natural Gas, makes Nuclear power less cost effective and causes plants to grow. Bad, bad, CO2; makes one wonders why nature even invented the stuff in the first place.
I guess after the lights go out and it gets cold, you�ll have a bit of time to think about the last three ice ages. Did they have CO2 back then? I wonder.
By the way did you know that some organizations in the Natural Gas and Nuclear power business sponsored the Climate Research Unit? Yep:
British Petroleum, 'Oil, LNG'
The United States Department of Energy, 'Nuclear'
UK Nirex Ltd. 'Nuclear'
Sultanate of Oman, 'LNG'
Shell Oil, 'Oil, LNG'
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, 'Nuclear'
KFA Germany, 'Nuclear'
Think about it.
I am very suspicious about the motivation of Centrica and National Grid when it comes to warnings of gas supplies, when there are now 7 big LNG tanks the size of the Albert Hall in Milford Haven.
The gas from these expands 600 times when LNG is regasified. As the liquefaction and transport of LNG means it loses 15% or so of its heating value, drawing from these tanks would add to NG's and Centrica's costs to the benefit of ExxonMobil and Dragon as their gas will be more expensive than that from Norway or North Sea.
McKinnon and Clarke (M&C;) fail to mention the Milford Haven huge tanks. Surely they are worth a mention.
Also Centrica has taken a 20% stake in British Energy and will create panic in order to get a subsidy for nuclear from the government!
Neither Centrica nor National Grid have warned about gas supplies, the storage news was generated by journalists and is incorrect.
The big issue this Government has failed to address over storage is the provision of strategic storage to protect the UK in the event of a failure of imported stock levels. To bring the UK upto European standards about 500 tanks equivalent to the ones at Dragon LNG would be needed! This is why most of our gas is stored underground in old gas fields.
The US has inherent and huge energy inefficiencies in housing, air conditioning and transport due to the lack of tax on fuel. Reduction in US consumption would probably lead to reduced world oil prices which link directly to our gas and power prices.
A simple policy such as setting limits on vehicle efficiency in the US (similar to Europe) could have a huge impact on USA Co2 emissions and overshadow any savings from reducing coal generation.