Ben Marlow In Cloud Cuckoo Land Again
By Paul Homewood
How this guy still has a job at the Telegraph is a mystery to me:
The Rosebank oilfield is located around 80 miles north-west of the Shetland Islands, 3,600 feet below the surface of the North Sea.
It is into this black abyss that any semblance of a coherent plan to power Britain has slipped after its owners were granted permission to drill for new oil and gas.
The timing of the announcement alone was comically bad. Just 24 hours after the International Energy Agency warned that any new oil and gas infrastructure was incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreements of limiting global warming to 1.5C – an accord of which the UK is a signatory – the North Sea Transition Authority gave the green light to a development that is expected to produce as much as 500m barrels of oil over its lifetime.
A cross-party group of MPs and peers estimate that is equivalent to 200m tonnes of carbon dioxide – “more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world.”
The truth of Rosebank is that it does none of the things that ministers and its cheerleaders claim. Instead, it underlines how desperately muddled our energy policy has become. It is the price we must pay for decades of failure to invest in, and plan for, an energy system capable of replacing one dominated by fossil fuels.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/28/rosebank-price-energy-failures-oilfield-north-sea/
It’s the same load of old tripe we are used to getting from Marlow.
The fact that his main argument against it is the Paris Agreement says it all! Does he not realise that the Paris Agreement actually formalised rapid increases in emissions? Does he not realise that it gave carte blanche to China, India and the rest of the developing world to carry on using as much fossil fuels as they want? Whatever your beliefs about global warming, nobody should pretend that it should be an economic blueprint for the UK, more a straitjacket.
Marlow clearly has not realised that we will still be using huge amounts of oil and gas for many years to come. It’s not me saying that, even the CCC accept this. So why should it make more sense to ship the stuff half way round the world, when we could supply some of it ourselves.
His main complaint seems to be that the amounts involved at Rosebank are small fry, in terms of our overall energy consumption. But so what? The same argument could be made about every economic policy decision.
He goes on to moan about the failure of the offshore wind auction this month. Evidently he is happy for the public to pay even greater subsidies for their electricity. As ever, he offers no solutions to the problems of intermittency.
His final moan is about our failure to build more nuclear, especially since he says there is a risk that Hinkley Point might not be ready till 2036. Maybe he should have been arguing for this 20 years ago, when his favourite Miliband and the rest of the Labour Party banned new nuclear, whilst setting the destruction of our energy security into motion.
The delays show just how short sighted it would have been to put all of our eggs in the nuclear/wind basket, as Marlow suggests.
Is it not time for the Telegraph to employ somebody who actually understands the energy sector, and send Ben Marlow packing to the Guardian, where he should feel more at home (judging by the avalanche of critical comments he gets every time he writes this nonsense!)
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The main reason the planning enquiry recommended the rejection of Sizewell C was the lack of water supply, not any energy quota or ‘Paris’ reasons. Another long-term policy failure (by all parties)? One common complaint about Rosebank is that it’s not ‘sold’ to the UK, which of course fails to understand the difference between the global market and (local) physical movement. I’ve even seen the cuckoo-land claim that the Rosebank oil will increase energy prices!
The reality of Rosebank is that it will be produced into shuttle tankers loading from an FPSO. It will take about a week to produce a 500,000bbl cargo, so the shuttle tankers have to be back in time to maintain production, which limits how far they may travel. The shuttle tankers will be specialised, able to keep station in storm conditions, and dedicated to the operation. UK law requires oil to be landed in the UK unless granted a specific export licence. For shuttle tankers, that is cargo by cargo. Landing the oil at a UK terminal (e.g. Sullom Voe) to secure export potential without export licences involves double handling and extra costs. If the government felt intransigent it could always deny export licences for sale to e.g. Germany as a destination in range of the shuttle tankers.
The oil is a good quality light grade more typical of production decades ago rather than the heavier and sourer production that dominates UK output currently, which is exported to the few refineries equipped to handle it – primarily in Rotterdam. That light 37 API oil would be ideal for our remaining refineries, who buy in similar oil from Norway and the US Gulf. Being able to back out some of the US Gulf imports would save substantially on shipping costs as well as reducing our import bills.
Since Equinor’s traders already sell a large volume of Norwegian crude to UK refiners, it is very likely that they will fully appreciate that the best value will be had by supplying them.
I do wish people woukd understand that things like “our import bills” are meaningless – a nation’s economy is not a household or a business and there is no “we” that imports. A refinery (that might be owned by anybody from anywhere) buys crude and sells refined products.
Actually I wish our politicians did understand more about our balance of payments. The reality is that if we spend more on imports and don’t export it has to be paid for. We have done that by selling off and mortgaging the country (our businesses, our homes) to foreign interests, so they get to siphon off the dividends and mortgage/bond interest, adding to our international deficit. We are starting to run out of things to sell and mortgage. That is we are getting closer to being bankrupt as a country. When that happens, we have to beg to borrow, and those who lend to us will restrict what they lend and make other demands of us. We will be economically conquered, most likely by the Chinese, forced to sign up to their outlandish Belt and Road terms, and commanded to do their bidding.
New units alert!
“more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world.”
A bizarre statement.
Perhaps we should start by accurately quantifying all non SI units.
Following Michael Shellenberger’s revelations about wind farms killing Right Whales I googled the latter. I discovered Right Whales have by far the largest testicles of all animals, representing over 1% of their entire body mass and (according to Wikipedia) ” the testes, at up to 2 m (6.6 ft) in length, 78 cm (2.56 ft) in diameter, and weighing up to 525 kg (1157 lbs), are also by far the largest of any animal on Earth.”
So….next time I refer to something as a load of B@ll@cks I am referring to the Right Whales scale and everyone will now know just how big that is.
Thanks for the laugh!
Ditto 🤣
This is a revealing statement about the 28 lowest income countries.
The inability to use inexpensive energy to power their economies is likely what keeps these nations poor.
What’s that in Wales’s?
The 28 smallest counties by population total 800,000 people, so equivalent to Manchester and Bristol, or about 1.2% of the UK population. So this is a deeply unimpressive claim.
It’s 0.038 FP.
Florida Populace was introduced a few days ago.
I thought the Paris ‘agreement’ was merely an ‘accord’ and not legally binding.
It is but the UK (foolishly) signed our own commitments into UK law. Besides, it’s a sleight of hand they all use to consolidate the deception that ‘Paris’ is binding, when as you correctly observe it was originally just an (unenforceable) agreement.
Kyoto started as an Accord in 1997 but wasn’t ratified as a treaty until 2005, when Russia came on board in response to a WTO membership offer by the EU. It was supposed to have a replacement by 2012, but Son of Kyoto didn’t happen until Paris
2015. As you say, it isn’t a Treaty, which is why Obama got away with signing up to it without Congress and Senate approval.
The only thing he gets right is the absurdity of successive governments failure to provide reliable energy, but even then it’s for the wrong reasons.
His obsession with renewables is laughable when its many shortcomings are obvious to everyone who isn’t drinking at the eco-trough.
I did put a comment on the article asking why the Telegraph employs an idiot like Marlow.
I note he is well-qualified, with a masters degree in Latin American Studies.
As a certain Vice-president might have said: I didn’t know they spoke Latin in America!
Geographer Harm J. de Blij (died in 2014) appeared regularly on the US’s ABC Good Morning America. Harm was noted for suggesting that “Latin-America” was a poor term and should be replaced with “Middle America” – North, Middle, South. Simple really.
In 10th grade we learned a bunch of Latin words (in Pennsylvania), such as Luna. Many such words are all around, without most knowing their heritage.
I think idiot is just another way of spelling Journalist.
So what is a chief city commentator. A bizarre accolade.
Rosebank is relatively inaccessible and deep. It could prove to be uneconomic but the govt. can say that they have given consent and it is up to the industry to take it up. Meanwhile we have extensive hydrocarbon resources under our feet, affordably available but ‘protected’ by the usual mob and the greens.
“Comically bad”, and I quote the great Marlow himself.
Perhaps he’d like to consent for a community wind turbine overlooking his house. Hell will freeze over first.
Is there any GAS (as opposed to oil) coming from Rosebank ?
Because gas is supposedly sold more locally than oil, and affects the local price.
@kzbkzb
“Oil will be sold and transported by upgraded shuttle tankers to customers’ refineries, supporting Europe’s energy security. Gas will be exported through the West of Shetland Pipeline system. This will ultimately end up in the UK grid, contributing to the UK’s energy security.”
https://www.equinor.com/energy/rosebank
Thanks Phillip, that’s good to know about the gas.
They ought to publicise that more, to gain public support.
It’s small – about 1mcm/day or 0.5% of supply in the shoulder season, less in winter.
There are plans to appease the Greens by getting power supplies for the field from the Viking wind farm on Shetland. So instead of having generation on the platform using the gas they will build a pipeline and a cable to transfer energy in opposite directions at the same time. 1mcm/d is about 11GWh/day, or just about the nameplate output of the wind farm (though the actual output will of course be only around half that). Perhaps they don’t wish to reinject gas, and they know flaring anything beyond a safety minimum is a no-no. Still, even on Shetland the wind doesn’t always blow… I’ve been there when it’s quite calm.
I’m not sure there’s any oil production that dors gave at least some gas, but is uneconomic to transport so is used as fuel at the site and/or is flared.
Watching the politicians pull back from Nut Zero, is a bit like watching a grown adult wincing after you told them not to touch the nettles and they ignored you.
There are people who imagine Sunk should be praised for reducing his speed of the headlong rush into the sea of nettle-zeo. Personally, I was rather looking forward to seeing what the populace were going to do to the populace as they all got stung.
“80 miles north-west of the Shetland Islands, 3,600 feet below the surface of the North Sea.” If it’s north WEST of Shetland surely it’s below the Atlantic not below the North Sea?
You’d think even a journalist might get that right.
@dearieme
Depends if your talking geology or the marine waters of Scotland.
https://marine.gov.scot/information/faroe-shetland-channel
Thank you for that. Did you notice “This criteria was designed to produce the characteristics of the North Atlantic water lying within the slope current at the Scottish shelf edge. This water most probably originates west of the UK, in the Rockall Through, …”?
If I were arMine Scotland I wouldn’t know whether to blush more at the grammatical howler or the spelling blunder.
Har har – a spelling blunder of my own, I see. Can I get off with calling it a typo?
Auto-correct is best excuse.
Hmm, I too thought it was the Atlantic ( NORTH) and popular notion of where Atlantic meets with the N Sea: and then there’s the Norwegian Sea. See if you look at different MAPS from different Countries around us, you’ll see the Sea is seen by many as their Sea or not their sea, it’s their Neighbour’s Sea, you see, so it’s the Sea I think it is seen it’s the Sea around our Coast that I see, not in the Media as they see it. Och that’ll do for Tea-time.
The idiot, Marlow is quite rightly eviscerated BTL, each and every time he writes this nonsense.
Despite what Fatih Birol has recently said the IEA acknowledged in its ‘World Energy Outlook 2022’ that
“From 80% today- a level constant for decades- fossil fuels fall to 75% by 2030 and just over 60% by 2050”
My pet theory about the IEA’s Fatih Birol is that he is angling to become the first Turkish Secretary General of the UN.
I very much doubt if the IDA’S forecasts have ever been any good about anything. Be interesting to look back and see what they were saying 10, 20 and 30 years ago.
He did get one thing right, the UK’s energy policy is a catastrophe and a mess . I was going to call it a plan but that would be an insult to the Oxford English Dictionary
Why assume this production will be additional? What will happen is that large producers with flexible production will reduce their output slightly if there’s excess supply. There’s no evidence more oil means more consumption of oil. Rather, more demand generally means Saudi, the swing producer, increases output and vice-versa.
It’s illogical, ignorant hysteria.
At the moment the Saudis are working hard towards getting oil to $100/bbl (it’s been over $96/bbl). Some reckon that Biden’s no new drilling leases and possibly no export policies could drive it to $150/bbl. The US is now our largest source of crude oil, having overtaken Norway. We should regard it as insecure supply.
But refining capacity matters more – there’s no point in having crude as such. Our refining capacity produces all our petrol demand but not enough kerosene or diesel, so those we have to import.
It’s very rare that the most economic way of operating a refinery is meeting local demand for different products with no surpluses or deficits. Exports and imports for balancing are quite normal. However, the shape of UK demand has changed because of dieselisation and the ending of fuel oil use (and lately, gas oil for heating in hospitals and other large buildings too). Although refineries have managed to convert some of the heavier fractions to gas/diesel, it has to some extent resulted in extra gasoline and less kerosene. Overall demand has fallen, so we end up with large middle distillate imports and petrol exports. Refineries have also had to deal with ever tightening standards for things like sulphur content as well as for their own operations. These can limit the desirability of investment in further upgrading facilities. The combination has led to refinery closures, and with the CCC having the closure of all refineries and petrochemical plants as a clear objective the industry would want to see them disbanded before investing now, I suspect.
Could the UK government pass a law that any north sea oil has to be sold into the UK markets first at Xprice and the surplus sold onto the international markets …thereby benefitting the UK people
The UK government long ago passed a law requiring all UKCS oil and gas be landed in the UK unless granted an explicit export licence. That’s why we have no oil pipelines to the Continent, and the only gas one from a producing field is/was Markham, which is tiny, and near a Dutch pipeline. We settled for the taxes on production and the chance some might come back to us via the BBL pipeline. However, trying to prevent oil trade makes no sense. During the miners’ strike we sold light North Sea oil and bought heavy gunge to maximise output of Heavy Fuel Oil for power stations. Now that most North Sea oil is heavy gunge and we have no need of fuel oil, we sell off the production and buy crudes better suited to our needs. Doing otherwise would greatly increase the costs of refined products sold to consumers.
Trying to interfere in pricing is much the same as excessive taxation: the result would be a lot less production. If you doubt that, look at the offshore wind auction that tried to interfere in pricing.
Thanks for the update info …is the same true for gas ?
A great article on UK crude oil refineries at Fuel Oil News https://fueloilnews.co.uk/2022/11/the-uks-refineries-past-present-and-future/
How does that benefit us? And please understand that crude oil is both very varied and simply a feedstock, not a useful product in and of itself. It has to be refined and refineries generally are set up to take different types of crude – light or heavy, sour (lots of sulphur) or sweet. Our remaining refineries use thr crude that best suits them. There’s also transport considerations.
But Jo Public doesn’t know that ( if anything) … and that’s played upon by the MSM & politicians who don’t all know much about it either.
I doubt many politicians or journalists understand it either