Friday 2 January 2009

And Thus Speaks A Potential Government Minister?

Courtesy of Mark Wadsworth I stumbled across the story that Greg Clark, Conservative Shadow Energy Minister is quoted in the Express stating "Germany has 99 days of gas storage capacity, France has 122 days, while Britain has just 15 days".

Mark then links to the Remittance Man who has this rebuttal:

"It is a basic truth in the minerals industry that the best place to keep stuff until it is needed is exactly where one finds it - in the ground. By doing so one incurs little or no expense and one does not expose one's supplies to a whole host of risks ranging from terrorism to accidental explosion.

According to
 this site, the breakdown of proved natural gas reserves in Europe is as follows:

CountryProved Reserves (cu m)

Norway2,288,000,000,000
Netherlands1,684,000,000,000
Ukraine1,075,000,000,000
United Kingdom509,200,000,000
France341,000,000,000
Germany246,500,000,000
Italy217,300,000,000
Poland158,100,000,000
Romania96,410,000,000
Denmark75,660,000,000
Hungary32,860,000,000
Croatia27,160,000,000
Austria14,390,000,000
Slovakia14,390,000,000
Ireland9,505,000,000
Georgia8,147,000,000
Bulgaria5,703,000,000
Czech Republic3,802,000,000
Belarus2,716,000,000
Spain2,444,000,000
Greece950,500,000
Albania814,700,000

Britain's sources of natural gas are her own reserves and Norway. France and Germany have much smaller reserves and hence rely on supplies from elsewhere, much of which come from countries that can be described as less than stable.

Basically our continental chums find themselves in a very different position to Britain when it comes to managing their natural gas supplies: they use more and have to buy it from places whose reputation for reliability is not of the best. The result of this is that they need man-made storage facilities to act as a buffer against disruptions of flow, Britain does not.

As for the price issue, it matters not whether the gas is stored in massive big tanks or is left underground. The price the consumer pays is determined at the time of use based on the ruling spot price, or a contract price. Indeed if the country were to follow Mr Clark's implied suggestion and maintained a four month buffer stock Brits could realistically expect prices to rise on account of the additional capital and storage costs his proposal would entail.

I can understand lay people and journalists failing to understand this and hence getting into a tizzy, but
Mr Clark is the man who hopes to manage Britain's energy policy after the next election. That being so, one would expect that he would have a better grasp of the realities of the energy sector than he has displayed with this outburst." (my emphasis)

Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken, "Before this man (Clark) speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Business and Enterprise Select Committee: Eleventh Report of Session 2007-08:

"Gas storage

12. The Government has not responded quickly enough to the UK’s increasing, and entirely predictable, gas import dependency by encouraging investment in storage.

This is an issue our predecessor Committee raised in its 2002 and 2005 Reports on security of supply and fuel prices. Significant additional storage, beyond that currently planned, is needed to reduce volatility in the wholesale gas price, which is otherwise likely to increase as the UK becomes increasingly dependent on gas imports.

It is now an issue of national importance and should be a high priority in domestic energy policy. (Paragraph 29)"

Witterings from Witney said...

This may be so, however the comment misses the point that instead of concentrating on the lack of storage it should be dealing with the increased dependency on gas at the expense of nuclear or clean coal.

The matter is further compounded by the government's headlong rush to rely on wind turbine, complying with EU requirements and over which it has no control,