AEP Wakes Up & Smells The Gas!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard must have joined Jeremy Warner on the road to Damascus!
The decaying British Government can breathe one sigh of relief at least: winter blackouts and an industrial heart attack have probably been avoided. This country has dodged an energy supply disaster by luck of the weather.
The stretch of strange balmy days across Europe has gone on long enough to slow the depletion of dangerously low gas stocks. Unless there is a late Beast from the East, we are likely to scrape by, bruised but not seriously damaged. “We’ve survived this winter. The market is no longer pricing in extreme stress,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodities at Saxo Bank…………..
But if we have been reprieved this time, we may be less lucky next time. The world is structurally short as China gobbles up the marginal supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and Europe turns its back on coal. “I am worried that we’ll have a repeat next winter,” said Hansen.
The US is ramping up liquefaction capacity and has overtaken Qatar to become the top global exporter, but this is still not enough. Energy analysts ICIS expect global supply of LNG to rise by 1.7pc this year, too little to cover a 5.5pc jump in demand. “Watch out Europe, we’re in for a 10.2m tonne deficit,” said Tom Marzec-Manser, the group’s gas analyst.
It is why Centrica boss, Chris O’Shea, warns that high prices will be here “for the next 18 months to two years”. He is breaking the news gently. We may be facing a gas squeeze through the 2020s, with cyclical ups and downs along the way.
Holland has responded with plans to prolong the life of its Groningen gas field as a national security measure, aiming to double production this year.
In the UK we are instead debating whether to penalise North Sea drillers with a further windfall tax. They already pay a double tariff of 40pc, bringing in tax revenues of over £2bn.
What we should be doing – even for net-zero reasons – is the exact opposite. The UK should cut taxes for the sector or conjure incentives to accelerate production in offshore waters. Oil and Gas UK say there is potential over the next year or two from the Saturn Banks field off Norfolk. Rapid approval for the larger Jackdaw field off Scotland could plug a large hole in the mid-2020s.
Labour and Liberal Democrat proposals to gouge what remains of the offshore drilling industry with a windfall tax need harsh interrogation.
We obviously cannot do without gas, given the legacy structure of home heating and power plants. We need it to buttress intermittent renewables: it is clean and “dispatchable”, easily fired up at a power plant when needed.
Gas is the COP-approved “bridge fuel”. It compliments the UK’s offshore wind expansion, and it is the feedstock for “blue hydrogen” (with carbon capture) needed to kick start the transition towards pure green hydrogen by mid-century. Labour wants Britain to become a world leader in hydrogen but seems not to understand how we get there.
Is Labour aware that imported LNG has a hair-raising carbon and methane footprint? New satellite data show that methane release from wildcat fracking sites in the US can be 10 or 20 times higher than from the best-practice sites of European oil and gas majors such as BP (I am a shareholder), Shell or Equinor. Siberian gas flowing through the leaky Soviet-era pipelines is just as bad. You might as well burn coal.
Methane has 84 times the greenhouse intensity of CO2 over 20 years, which is why it rocketed to the top of the agenda at COP26. If you worry about climate tipping points, you worry about methane.
Gas for LNG has to be transported to terminals, cooled to minus 162°C, shipped as a liquid across oceans, then turned back into gas. OGUK says the carbon footprint is 55-60kg of CO2 (barrel equivalent), compared to 20 kilos for North Sea gas. Even fracking in Lancashire would be better than this – and cheaper – but which fool would invest in British fracking after the shabby treatment of Cuadrilla?
Pseudo-green posturing over this is deeply irritating. A windfall tax on UK drillers means targeting BP and Shell, the very companies trying to bring about the hydrogen economy, and with the engineering skills to do so. Their bumper revenues last year scarcely offset calamitous losses the year before. They need their profit stream to fund the push for green gigawatts.
Could this be the same Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who wrote just two months ago that “the era of oil and gas will soon be over”?
Or the one who wrote two years ago that “the twin-pincers of draconian carbon curbs and plummeting renewable costs will sweep away much of the old energy order, and that markets will bring this forward demolition job soon enough with Schumpeterian ferocity.”
Surely not!
Finally, assuming it really is the same AEP, he has evidently woken up to the realisation that wind power is far too intermittent to rely on. The more wind capacity you build, the more you need standby capacity, and that pretty much means gas. Nuclear cannot be ramped up and down, and coal power is also better as baseload.
Quite simply, we do not have any other energy source to back up wind power at any sort of scale, and will not for the foreseeable future.
It is interesting that he talks about blue hydrogen, that is hydrogen made by steam reforming natural gas with carbon storage tacked on. As I have long pointed out, this also needs lots of natural gas. Indeed you need much more gas to produce hydrogen than you would if you burnt the stuff in the first place, because the process is very energy intensive.
I am also pleased to see his comments that North Sea gas is just about as clean as you can get, if you are looking at GHG emissions. As he notes, the Russian pipelines are so leaky that much of the gas simply escapes into the atmosphere long before it reaches Europe.
LNG is arguably even worse, with the energy used to transport it to terminals, freeze it and ship it halfway across the world.
Maybe he could have used the same logic a few months ago when he damned the Cumbrian coalmine, which would have offered the same advantages:
It is a pity that the likes of AEP and Jeremy Warner did not point out these glaring holes in the Green Agenda years ago, instead of giving it legitimacy.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Right now, Friday morning, our wind fleet, with an installed capacity of over 24.0GW, can only produce 0.62GW of power. Wind power is useless when the wind doesn’t blow.
With high pressure forecast to be over the UK for the next couple of weeks
Pressure, wind, and more can be seen here:
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=53.6;-2.1;3&l=wind-10m
Without Coal (5%) and Interconnector Supplies from Europe (14%) , swathes of the country would be blacked out .
I suppose AEP could claim to be half right but he seems to be unwilling or unable to accept the frailty of wind.
My ambition would be to aggregate on a periodic basis the extent to which actual output falls short of installed capacity.
Perhaps the ‘period’ should be for the 5 months starting with November when the power is really needed.
The stats. to be issued to the serious media such at the FT, The Economist and the heavy dailies on a monthly basis. Copy to Tax Payers Alliance with cost/charges to the economy of supporting such a fragile power source. Then the BBC might open at least one eye and take note.
As an interest group it is clear that we have the facts. It’s time to assemble and publish otherwise we will seem like little else than a lobby in waiting.
This afternoon everything is being used. Nothing is switched off. Although we’ve got high pressure for the next few days daytime temperatures are forecast to be a bit higher that today.
Meanwhile, here in France, the morning post brings a letter telling my monthly energy bill will go up by 25% from March 1!
Only 25%? – We’ve been threatened with a possible doubling of prices. Cue Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen Sketch”…
Maybe AEP finally worked out that freezing in the dark for the sake of ‘green ambition’ is not a great plan, including for him.
Should AEP be applauded for being a bit less of an ignorant idiot than he was 2 years ago? He still thinks windmills are a viable option and so ignores the costs of this. He also hasn’t worked out – or been spoon fed as he probably is not capable on his own – that any form of hydrogen will make current gas costs and associated generated electricity look like loose change.
More worrying is that Mr Pritchard thinks winter is over, not so many years ago we returned from an Easter trip to Europe in mid April to find Snowdonia fully in the grip of winter, the freezing level had been below sea level for at least two weeks. Though no doubt the lack of a big freeze will be ‘evidence’ of cli………….! It would pain me to utter the damned expression.
Early calling a putt in my golf group will get you in a lot of trouble.
Early calling winter can get people killed.
The winter of 1947 did really start until 21st January.
I can remember digging cars out of snowdrifts on the B827 in Perthshire on a Good Friday in the 1960s. The earliest date it could have been is 24th March, it was a cold weekend
Very interesting and apt as I am updating my weekly energy usage. Gas use was less than a year ago but as Mr Fraser points out, it ain’t over yet. My highest weekly gas usage in 2021 was the week ending 13 February. And then of course we had the frosts of April to push up the annual gas usage.
I just got my heating bill for the month of December here in Lithuania. A one hundred and fifty percent increase. And it wasn’t cheap to start with. Of course, it isn’t just me but all the stores, clinics, commercial operations that already have numerous problems flowing from ever changing covid restrictions. They are going to raise their prices more than they already have.
All the locals walking around saying ……..we don’t want any stinkin’ gas from Putin…. are about to discover what energy poverty means. I can afford it but I suspect that a lot of people around here are going to start feeling the pinch in a big way.
Not so different across the border here in Latvia, but without the Putin complaints. We have the only large gas storage area in the Baltics which has helped, but the prices depend where one lives. In one town the rise in heating costs is 50%, in the next 100%, depending on the local setup. Just pleased to be using wood, the equivalent of an aga but much more efficient. And lots of local timber if the prices rise.
Always interesting to hear from the Baltic States.
If the UK was Fracking, would there be a ready made, lucrative export market?
The Baltic states have had it easy in recent decades, nobody alive would have experienced the persistent extreme cold of WW2, probably a significant factor in the outcome of Operation Barbarossa:
Mild weather? not in South West France which has had minus C deg nights for a week, and at least 5 more to come. We are talking -4C or below.
Screamers are unhelpful when dealing with a crisis, in this case energy supply management. They never know what they are talking about. They always incite dangerous, hysterical overreaction. They create false crises exemplified by the current European obsession with “net zero carbon.”
There is no way out for the UK as all the power stations have gone.
Meanwhile the village idiot is in charge making incomprehensible decisions about everything.
Seriously there is every possibility of using early retired aviation gas turbines for power generation.
https://www.ge.com/news/reports/ge-oil-gas-just-turned-worlds-largest-jet-engine-65-megawatt-power-plant
During the Miner’s strike Littlebrook D in Dartford ran three 35MW Concorde gas turbines almost continuously for 18 months.
And a French city despite EU funding
French city drops order for 51 hydrogen buses after realising electric ones six times cheaper to run
The $33m green H2 project, launched in Montpellier in 2019 in conjunction with EDF, had already been awarded regional, national and EU funding
https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/french-city-drops-order-for-51-hydrogen-buses-after-realising-electric-ones-six-times-cheaper-to-run/2-1-1143717
French” city drops order for 51 hydrogen buses after realising electric ones six times cheaper to run”
Look on the bright side – at least EV buses will only burn to the ground when something goes wrong, not take out half the neighbourhood when they explode…
Tha’s a cheerful lad today, Dave!
Perspective . . . Something long overdue among our ‘friends’ driving ‘The big Green Propaganda Machine’ . . . .
Equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Diversity, inclusion, and equity.
DIE
H/t Steve Sailer
Hang on – if gas has suddenly become persona grata then why is the UK government planning to phase out gas boilers?
It’s called joined up thinking. Get with the program! 😉
” If you worry about climate tipping points, you worry about methane.” ………”Methane has 84 times the greenhouse intensity of CO2 over 20 years”………
Does AEP know what happens to remove methane from the atmosphere? It combines with existing atmospheric OH radicals to break down to CO2 and water vapour. However fugitive hydrogen emissions would overwhelm those existing Hydroxyl radicals leaving the methane to stay potentially forever. Oh dear.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319920302779
To the extent the methane story has any validity the carbon dioxide story has less validity. After all, whatever has happened is a fixed fact, and saying some of it was due to an unrecognized cause means that less can be assigned to the more familiar.
Methane and carbon dioxide have risen in the atmosphere at similar rates, in step with the increase in world population.
Click to access 5556-methane-factsheet.pdf
The UK reduced its controllable methane emissions by 57.6% from 1990 to 2010. Allowing for the fact that the residence time of methane in the atmosphere is only eight years even the fanatics should admit that we have ‘done our bit!’
“84 times the greenhouse intensity of CO2” makes me feel old, as I can remember when it was 14 times, then 23 times, followed by 35 times, then 44 etc. Is this a new World record or merely one in the UK?
Nevermind, so long as it sounds bad.
Until we can find a way to measure (and therefore be capable of testing) Global Warming Potential, it must take its place in the dustbin of unscientific junk.
It was just a straight lift from that rubbish thing called Wikipedia.
I once read a claim that H2 will react with ozone, suggesting a move to H2 as a manufactured fuel would be bad for the old ozone layer thing. Can you shed any light on this Ray? Sounded plausible, but I have no background in chemistry.
“…a claim that H2 will react with ozone [in the stratosphere]…”
It is more complicated than that.
It does react, but this does not deplete the ozone layer DIRECTLY, since the single oxygen atom released immediately joins with a molecule of 02 to recreate O3.
However, this reaction, and more importantly the reaction with the hydroxyl radical .OH. (The dot before the O is deliberate; it signifies an unpaired electron), introduces WATER into the bone-dry upper atmosphere. Water, as a ‘greenhouse gas’ at THIS place, must COOL the earth – the stratosphere to be exact – by radiation to space. It is credibly suggested that this cooling will change the polar vortices in such a way that recovery of the ozone layer from its present depleted state will be disrupted.
It all depends on how much hydrogen is lost by leaks in a ‘hydrogen economy’ and how much of the world adopts such a regime.. Different assumptions lead to different predictions for the ozone layer – from trivial damage to major damage. One should always remember, of course, that the residence time of hydrogen in the atmosphere is quite limited.
I think that the burden of proof is fully on the advocates of a hydrogen economy (HE) to PROVE their plans WILL NOT cause major damage to major planetary equilibria. Challenging them on the ozone layer is quite justified, even if our private view is that HE is bat-shit!
I notice that the headline from the DT advocates that national energy policies
should be implemented in a ‘hell-bent’ way. The Dictionary defines “hell-bent” as “reckless and impetuous.”
While on the subject of hypocrites.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yachts-be-exempt-eus-carbon-pricing-plan
‘The stretch of strange balmy days across Europe’
Climate change good. Today. Only.
And as any quick bit of research would show, not at all “strange”.
As a base load fuel hydrogen is a fantasy, fracking is a figment of imagination, coal will need a complete rebuild of power stations and nuclear is long term maybe. We have to get what we can out of what we have and that means maximising the out put of CCGT power stations at the same time introducing maximum flexibility by adapting them to dual fuel and even, primarily, using gas oil or diesel oil. Protect the gas for domestic use.
Except that cycling CCGT results in lower efficiency but higher costs and CO2 emissions. If you want low emissions you need to run them at steady output, and that also reduces maintenance costs and reduces the chances of breakdowns (can be important in cold weather).
Winter hasn’t started yet.
At 16.00 hours today 14/1 Wind provided 0.41GW or 0.98% of demand. Coal 1.84GW or 4.4%. Shame on those who ordered the blowing up of Longannet power station recently.
Won’t see those stats on the BBC
Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is just another journalist eking out a living following the Elitist Editorial guidance as handed down from above. We must never loose site of ‘power’ and where it comes from . . . the almighty $$ and editorialists know that ‘calamity’ sells papers !
Respectfully, there are two sides to freedom of the press.
Being denied freedom of expression by the press is another kind of suppression of free speech. Editorial decisions can, and do, limit free speech. Selecting which voices may be heard is a form of autocratic bias. By exclusion, only those that are vetted may be heard. Right or wrong this is suppression of free speech.
Vertical integration of Global Media ownership, $$, has restrained the once broad-based hearing process where counterintuitive positions were proposed and could find a voice, and a hearing in public opinion.
Are not . . . The # 1 journalistic principals . . . ‘Truth’ . . . ‘Accuracy’ . . . ‘Objectivity’ . . . the cornerstones of Journalistic ethos.
Robert Oppenheimer – is quoted to have said . . .
We do not believe any group of people adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it, is to be free to inquire.”
That freedom of expression is paramount in democratic societies worldwide . . . that freedom breaks down when elitist intellectualism stifles the voices of those who think and speak outside the ‘Mainstream perspective’. Populism results because the common people, 80% of society, need to ‘feel heard and be heard’ even when the Media’s intellectual elite disagree.
The movement to protect the Environment is undeniably one of the strongest voices being heard throughout western democracies. A fantastic job has been done bringing man’s incessant destruction of the planet and its ecosystems into focus.
However, . . . The ‘Carbon Cycle’ does NOT exist . . . This may sound strange given the attention ‘Carbon’ gets from ALL sides. It has remained ‘Stable’ at 280 PPM throughout the Holocene . . . for at least 10,000 years. Then, suddenly, studies began to demonstrate that it has been rising steadily since Humans began burning vast quantities of fossil fuels since the mid 1700’s . . . thanks to James Watt and the invention of the flywheel on steam engines. There have been 18 periods of Natural Warming and Natural Cooling absent ANY cycle in CO2.
Page 4 . . .
(PDF) Climate Change For the 21 st Century | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
Only our current warming cycle ‘The Modern Warming Period’ can be blamed on Carbon. If the other Eight (8) Warming Periods were NOT linked to CO2 in any way . . . how and why can this Warming Period alone be caused by Carbon??
The answer is simple . . . A failure among Environmental propagandists to produce Honest, scientific comparisons to the 8 previous Periods of Warming that have occurred in just the last 100,000 years. I do not believe that this is in any way some dark conspiracy . . . It has been an egregious oversite . . . Then a refusal to review these facts now . . . If you believe in ‘cleaning up the planet’, why would you want to be the ONE to open Pandora’s Box? . . . It would be like pulling Hans Brinker’s finger from the Dyke or Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg . . . The old adage . . . There are none so blind as those who will not see . . .
Trillions of dollars are at steak hinging on ‘Unverifiable’ data supported by the 75,000 or more people who have professional credentials as ‘Environmental Scientists’. The parameters for their field of study were formed and defined just in the last 30 years. That is not much time historically to vet and define an entire field of University study . . . All have studied ‘Peer Reviewed’ data confirming our current models on climate change . . . Absent one critical fact . . . History proves NO carbon cycles following either Warming or Cooling for at least 10,000 years. Even the link between Volcanoes and Climate Change, Cold Climate Change has been abandoned.
Propaganda is soo much easier to sustain without complicating it with too much Science, History or Fact . . . they keep it simple . . . and everyone believes.
(PDF) CO2 Cradle of Life on Planet Earth | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
Finally . . . Human contribution is 3 % added annually to the Environment, while 97 % is from Nature.
CO2 as a percentage of the atmosphere that is 0.04 % of the total content of the atmosphere.
Let that sink for a minute, then do the math . . . how many decimals right of one (1) is that ??
Furthermore, EVERY discussion about Electricity as a replacement for Fossil Fuels fails the test of Ohm’s Law. Resistance = line loss – HEAT . . . At least 28% of the energy produced is lost to resistance along the way to charge an Electric Car battery. So, when we calculate demand . . . based on consumption . . . that number is 28 % below what needs to be produced. Electric car manufacturers tell you what is drawn from the battery . . . NOT . . . how much electricity was produced to charge that battery !
https://www.academia.edu/62574334/Tesla_Versus_Toyota_Camry
My thoughts . . .
Could you be a bit briefer?
Paul brings us an education describing the egregious falsehoods coming from ‘The Big Green Propaganda Machine’ every day. They are supported by Billions of $ from the United Nations through the IPCC and every western government in the world. The best research available needs to be distributed, brought out and declared broadly, Publicly. More of this is better than short retorts supporting Paul’s goals.
Some of the greatest minds on Earth are on the same page . . . Even they are left in obscurity . . . Nevertheless . . . they strive to be heard . . .
The Global Warming Swindle . . U-Tube . . . A Must See !!!
Wind 1GW at moment, just about same as Gas open cycle! Thank goodness for the interconnectors 5GW
“coal power is also better as baseload”
I would tend to disagree. Coal and gas fired power are good choices for flexible operation, including frequent cycling off and on.
When a generation mix has both coal and gas fired generation, the choice can be dictated by economics of the merit order. That’s what the UK has done for a couple of decades.
A good measure of coal and gas fired generation gave us the benefit of lower costs, as the two fuels vie with each other in the international market. This lowers cost and increases energy security as the lower price signals relative abundance of a fuel.
Right now the “dark spread” is about twice the “spark spread” and the market is signalling coal fired generation. Except we have foolishly destroyed all our valuable coal fired assets through punitive CO2 taxation and then government diktat.
Not having a good measure of coal fired capacity leaves the UK with energy scarcity and exposure to high gas prices.
The first stages of energy rationing is well underway in industry. We have been toying with the idea for years, calling it “Demand Side Management”. Now we can experience it, whether we like it or not.
Exactly right. Gas prices are held at the price of alternatives. Very basic economics that our politicians & bureaucrats, in love with their genius at planning, have dismissed as old-fashioned.
He’s half right!
Mr Evans-Prichard, in common with most commentators, seems to believe that gas is a back up fuel and is only switched on when wind generation is low. Closed cycle gas generation is the most important form of genertaion we have, now that the foolhardy decison was made to limit and eventually eliminate coal generation.
CCGT is the conductor of the grid, it’s output rises and falls to maintain frequency, the most important parameter on the grid as it measures the balance of supply and demand. If that balance is lost we have partial, or even in a worst case scenario, a total grid failure which will take a very long time to restore. This, I believe at the moment, is very unlikely.
an
However trying to add more renewable capcity decreases the already lowered reliability of the grid and there must come a time when the grid power engineers say no more contrary to government policy?
AEP has not changed his mind. He is a word whore*, a punslinger for hire. Presumably the rather unpleasant organisation that pays for his mortgage, his whisky and his scrambled eggs has decided that the climate scam has run out of road and is investing in fossil fuel.
JF
*”‘Ello, darlin’, fancy a good metaphor?”
“Hammering ‘big oil’ will do nothing to help fuel poverty or the climate
For now the world is still overwhelmingly dependent on hydrocarbons for its energy needs and we need companies to keep producing them”
Jeremy Warner DT 8 Jan 22
I rest my case.
JF