Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
To truly understand a battle, or even a war, you have to visit it - where it happened. I don’t know why this is true, but it is
I got this insight two years ago when - for the first time - I visited major US civil war battlefields. Like Franklin and Antietam. I realised the scale of the bloodshed, the intensity of the struggle, but also why the war unfolded as it did - this army was here, this railroad was there, that town was in the way. “Ah now I get it”
Now I’ve had the same experience at Battle. I must have read about the Battle of Hastings a hundred times. I knew all about Harold’s eye and the shield wall and the Norman cavalry
Yet I had to go to Battle to see the incline of the hill the Normans were charging up, to see the terrain the English had marched over, so wearily - also to get the sense of the wild carnage (for the time) - 7000 dead. Also a ghost of the historic trauma still lingers there - but you only detect if if you go there
Odd
The more I read about it, the more I conclude that battle (and war) is horrible in almost every single way.
I know this is all very obvious stuff, but it's not just the odd one or two unlucky ones who get hit, with a bit of "occupational hazard" for yourself and always some other Joe who's the unlucky one.
You only "win" by killing a vast number of the enemy, and that usually means taking heavy casualties yourself. That means blood. Lots of blood. YOUR blood.
Which means thousands and thousands of men, dead, in their late teens or twenties, usually very horribly and painfully and with no mercy, and heavily traumatised survivors, often with terrible wounds. That means ruined families, devastated children and deeply-scarred communities. A huge loss of human talent and a tremendous waste of people, energy and treasure.
Almost anything should be done to avoid it, and the best way to do that is through very good preparation, deterrence, determination, education, and very skilled diplomacy.
Otherwise, the tragedy will come again.
And, of course, strong economic and social ties. One of the main motivations for the foundation of the EEC was to bind its members so closely together that war between them would become unthinkable and, by and large, it has worked. It's also what Merkel was purportedly trying to do with Russia; that, sadly, didn't work.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
As we approach the end of the Bank Holiday weekend, I suspect that the organisers and instigators of the asylum hotels demonstrations, and the 'Operation raising the colours' campaign, will be pretty disappointed. Both events have had, proportionately, trivial numbers of people involved. The call for the indigenous English masses to rise up in protest against the metropolitan elite and in favour of mass deportations has been largely ignored in favour of the beach, the pub, and other lovely activities. Unless I've missed something, there haven't been any significant outbreaks of disorder. Even Lucy Connolly is fading from the news. All in all, it's the dog that didn't bark.
Good news, I think. The febrile atmosphere that some have tried to engender should gradually fade away as people return to school, college and work next week. Here's hoping that more measured solutions to the problems we have will return to the fore.
As we approach the end of the Bank Holiday weekend, I suspect that the organisers and instigators of the asylum hotels demonstrations, and the 'Operation raising the colours' campaign, will be pretty disappointed. Both events have had, proportionately, trivial numbers of people involved. The call for the indigenous English masses to rise up in protest against the metropolitan elite and in favour of mass deportations has been largely ignored in favour of the beach, the pub, and other lovely activities. Unless I've missed something, there haven't been any significant outbreaks of disorder. Even Lucy Connolly is fading from the news. All in all, it's the dog that didn't bark.
Good news, I think. The febrile atmosphere that some have tried to engender should gradually fade away as people return to school, college and work next week. Here's hoping that more measured solutions to the problems we have will return to the fore.
Er, what were you expecting? Civil war by lunchtime? I thought I was the over-dramatic one on PB
Prof David Betz of KCL gives us a five year timeline to Ulsterisation and serious civil strife (and he puts a 50% chance on this, IIRC)
When he made this infamous prediction a few months ago he said that, firstly, we will see:
1. Aggressive assertion/demarcation of white British districts, rights, identity - with flags and protests
2. Signs of violent pushback against this by migrants and others
This last week we have seen "1" come true, and at the weekend (fights, petrol bombs) we saw "2" come true
So we are pretty much bang on his timeline, and he is a recognised global expert on civil disorder (who advises the MoD). Indeed it is arguable we are slightly ahead of schedule
For the purposes of clarity - if it is needed - I really clearly obviously hope he's wrong. I like a bit of excitement but there is a limit. Also, I had a lovely day today with my offspring. The sun shone, Kent looked lush, Battle was fun, I don't want my kids to graduate into a society in violent turmoil. And we still have time for a sensible government to do the things needed to avert the worst case scenario. Heck, maybe even this dumb Labour government will somehow find a way to do it
But hoping is all I can do, and I cannot deny that Betz might well be right
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
Are we literally the only country doing this self harming shit? Why is Ed Miliband not in a loony bin?
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
So... I'm 99% in agreement with you. (And let's not even go into the extent to which the UK government has fucked things up by constantly changing the tax system.)
But if I recall correctly, because of the differences in licensing, with the Norwegians only releasing a few parcels at a time, the Norwegian North Sea is significantly less well explored than the British North Sea.
That's not to say there aren't some really promising areas, but it is likely there are fewer British opportunities than Norwegian ones.
As we approach the end of the Bank Holiday weekend, I suspect that the organisers and instigators of the asylum hotels demonstrations, and the 'Operation raising the colours' campaign, will be pretty disappointed. Both events have had, proportionately, trivial numbers of people involved. The call for the indigenous English masses to rise up in protest against the metropolitan elite and in favour of mass deportations has been largely ignored in favour of the beach, the pub, and other lovely activities. Unless I've missed something, there haven't been any significant outbreaks of disorder. Even Lucy Connolly is fading from the news. All in all, it's the dog that didn't bark.
Good news, I think. The febrile atmosphere that some have tried to engender should gradually fade away as people return to school, college and work next week. Here's hoping that more measured solutions to the problems we have will return to the fore.
I know someone who genuinely thinks we're in a civil war right now, and I think they will be disappointed.
I don't say we have no societal problems or potential for strife, but there seems to be a desire to make things particularly dramatic.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
So... I'm 99% in agreement with you. (And let's not even go into the extent to which the UK government has fucked things up by constantly changing the tax system.)
But if I recall correctly, because of the differences in licensing, with the Norwegians only releasing a few parcels at a time, the Norwegian North Sea is significantly less well explored than the British North Sea.
That's not to say there aren't some really promising areas, but it is likely there are fewer British opportunities than Norwegian ones.
And by explored, I mean there have been many more exploratory wells drilled in the British North Sea than the Norwegian one.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
Are we literally the only country doing this self harming shit? Why is Ed Miliband not in a loony bin?
He would be in the loony bin if anyone could work out which colour one he had imposed as the loony bin out of the thousands of different recycling options.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
11 years is a long, long time, perhaps a generation in energy security terms.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
We should be extracting our oil so that we, and other friendly countries, use our oil instead of importing from Russia, the Middle East and the USA, which are all regimes that don’t deserve our support.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
This insanity really has to stop. And if that makes Ed Miliband resign that would just be a bonus.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
This insanity really has to stop. And if that makes Ed Miliband resign that would just be a bonus.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
This insanity really has to stop. And if that makes Ed Miliband resign that would just be a bonus.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
We should be extracting our oil so that we, and other friendly countries, use our oil instead of importing from Russia, the Middle East and the USA, which are all regimes that don’t deserve our support.
That just means someone else will use their oil, like India. The only way to undercut them is to provide an alternative technology.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
That’s insanity. It’s a scandal that our media don’t highlight this. It’s far more important than small boats and asylum hotels.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
France is paradoxical as always
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
Supporting the far right is more respectable in France than in other countries. Checking the result in 2024, I see indeed that the RN MP won 56% on the first round in this constituency . Overall, RN hold 5 out of 9 seats in Alpes-Maritimes.
In recent years, FN/RN have expanded into bleak towns in the North East that used to vote Communist.
What does far-right actually mean these days?
I've seen Farage called it, Le Pen, and Meloni.
None have come close to initiating brutal wars of conquest that abrogate the laws of war, glorifying death and violence, started genocides or militarised their whole societies, whilst totally suspending democracy, so far as I can tell.
I would guess it’s to be socially conservative, anti-immigration, small c conservative and believe in industrial/national protectionism in its widest range.
I think Farage would probably be part of the more fiscally liberal coalition.
To some people anyone who has right of centre views they don’t like is far-right which doesn’t help political discourse. Like saying everyone left of centre is socialist. Racism and intolerance have their bailiwick in the extreme reaches of the far right as socialism has its own dark heart.
Yes, which shows how devalued the term has become. Anyone who's not prima facie a "Centrist Dad".
I now effectively ignore any labelling accordingly.
Britain First British Democrats (BDP) British First Party British National Party (BNP) Homeland Party National Front National Liberal Party
And as "right to far right"...
English Democrats Scottish Family Party UKIP
Great.
So I take it you yourself will never use the term to describe Farage or Reform as such, then, yet alone the Conservatives?
Have I ever called the Tories or Reform UK "far right"? If so, please point it out to me.
I don't know why you aren't more concerned about the people who clearly are far right rather than dumping on people who haven't even done the thing you're complaining about.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Thanks Richard for this insight.
What a national disgrace.
We are brassic and paying to ensure future generations are unable to recover any of the losses we are lumbering them with.
As we approach the end of the Bank Holiday weekend, I suspect that the organisers and instigators of the asylum hotels demonstrations, and the 'Operation raising the colours' campaign, will be pretty disappointed. Both events have had, proportionately, trivial numbers of people involved. The call for the indigenous English masses to rise up in protest against the metropolitan elite and in favour of mass deportations has been largely ignored in favour of the beach, the pub, and other lovely activities. Unless I've missed something, there haven't been any significant outbreaks of disorder. Even Lucy Connolly is fading from the news. All in all, it's the dog that didn't bark.
Good news, I think. The febrile atmosphere that some have tried to engender should gradually fade away as people return to school, college and work next week. Here's hoping that more measured solutions to the problems we have will return to the fore.
most people dont street protest or indeed "virtue signal" (getting a flag is much more of a lefty thing to do who do go more in for virtue signalling) but do vote and thats all they need to do to get Reform in and Labour out and a chance of a government being on their side
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
We should be extracting our oil so that we, and other friendly countries, use our oil instead of importing from Russia, the Middle East and the USA, which are all regimes that don’t deserve our support.
That just means someone else will use their oil, like India. The only way to undercut them is to provide an alternative technology.
India are using their oil already. It doesn’t mean that we and other countries shouldn’t use ours. Oil is going to be used for the forseeable future, despite what we would like to happen. So lets use ours.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
So... I'm 99% in agreement with you. (And let's not even go into the extent to which the UK government has fucked things up by constantly changing the tax system.)
But if I recall correctly, because of the differences in licensing, with the Norwegians only releasing a few parcels at a time, the Norwegian North Sea is significantly less well explored than the British North Sea.
That's not to say there aren't some really promising areas, but it is likely there are fewer British opportunities than Norwegian ones.
And by explored, I mean there have been many more exploratory wells drilled in the British North Sea than the Norwegian one.
No. I don't think that is correct.
According to the study done by Geoscience world in 2020 there have been 1637 exploration wells drilled in the UK sector. since the 1960s
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in 2017 they had drilled a total of 1654 exploration wells since exploration started in the 60s.
Now that is over a larger area admittedly but the numbers remain fairly similar.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
Are we literally the only country doing this self harming shit? Why is Ed Miliband not in a loony bin?
He would be in the loony bin if anyone could work out which colour one he had imposed as the loony bin out of the thousands of different recycling options.
I am reminded of this excellent line from that harrowing American attack on the UK, on substack
"The UK has one of the most clownish and intolerable political castes that presently exists anywhere on the planet”.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
I have once, and once only, been to such an event and had this experience, that the food was veggie for everyone without warning. It was at the Royal College of Physicians. It was also, hands down, the tastiest food I've ever had at such an event. Absolutely delicious. I heartily recommend the venue.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing so is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse our idiocy.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse us our idiocy.
You really don't get it do you. Just fall back on your stock responses without actually looking at what is being written by anyone else.
Try actually reading what is being written in the thread and then think about a sensible response.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
Are you OK with it being illegal to sell pork products in Israel? (Some shops run by Russian immigrants break the law and pay the fines.)
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
May not even be hyperbolic, the amount of things that boil down to including hydrocarbons is far more than most people imagine.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is one reason why, I believe, once we have kicked out this Labour government, and the uniparty in general, we need trials. Like a proper revolution
We have a regime that in multiple ways, is actively conspiring to make British lives worse. Poorer, sadder, crappier, maybe even more violent. This needs a reckoning, not just an election defeat. Until the Nu10k learn that there can be a real and severe price for their narcissistic lunacy and incompetence, they will keep doing it
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
I think Casino_Royale suggested that part of the problem for environmentalists is that for every 10 pragmatic cyclists (like me, I hope), there is 1 loony that undermines the whole cause.
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all too easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
(Or Leon who is wittering on about getting a guillotine out or something).
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
So... I'm 99% in agreement with you. (And let's not even go into the extent to which the UK government has fucked things up by constantly changing the tax system.)
But if I recall correctly, because of the differences in licensing, with the Norwegians only releasing a few parcels at a time, the Norwegian North Sea is significantly less well explored than the British North Sea.
That's not to say there aren't some really promising areas, but it is likely there are fewer British opportunities than Norwegian ones.
And by explored, I mean there have been many more exploratory wells drilled in the British North Sea than the Norwegian one.
No. I don't think that is correct.
According to the study done by Geoscience world in 2020 there have been 1637 exploration wells drilled in the UK sector. since the 1960s
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in 2017 they had drilled a total of 1654 exploration wells since exploration started in the 60s.
Now that is over a larger area admittedly but the numbers remain fairly similar.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
France is paradoxical as always
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
Supporting the far right is more respectable in France than in other countries. Checking the result in 2024, I see indeed that the RN MP won 56% on the first round in this constituency . Overall, RN hold 5 out of 9 seats in Alpes-Maritimes.
In recent years, FN/RN have expanded into bleak towns in the North East that used to vote Communist.
What does far-right actually mean these days?
I've seen Farage called it, Le Pen, and Meloni.
None have come close to initiating brutal wars of conquest that abrogate the laws of war, glorifying death and violence, started genocides or militarised their whole societies, whilst totally suspending democracy, so far as I can tell.
I would guess it’s to be socially conservative, anti-immigration, small c conservative and believe in industrial/national protectionism in its widest range.
I think Farage would probably be part of the more fiscally liberal coalition.
To some people anyone who has right of centre views they don’t like is far-right which doesn’t help political discourse. Like saying everyone left of centre is socialist. Racism and intolerance have their bailiwick in the extreme reaches of the far right as socialism has its own dark heart.
Yes, which shows how devalued the term has become. Anyone who's not prima facie a "Centrist Dad".
I now effectively ignore any labelling accordingly.
As an aside, @Richard_Tyndall's fundamental point - that you concentrate on the demand side of the equation - is absolutely correct. There is exactly zero benefit to preventing UK exploitation of hydrocarbons, and all it does is make sure that where they are extracted (and they will be extracted because demand creates supply), will probably have worse envrionmental and labour standards.
As an aside, @Richard_Tyndall's fundamental point - that you concentrate on the demand side of the equation - is absolutely correct. There is exactly zero benefit to preventing UK exploitation of hydrocarbons, and all it does is make sure that where they are extracted (and they will be extracted because demand creates supply), will probably have worse envrionmental and labour standards.
His point about making Directors legally responsible for clean ups is also spot on: otherwise you have a heads I win, tails you lose type situation.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
That’s insanity. It’s a scandal that our media don’t highlight this. It’s far more important than small boats and asylum hotels.
Our media largely go where the dog is wagging it's tail. Then invite two contradictory opinions in to bicker about the resulting damp spot. If you're lucky, they skip that step and just declare it means their opinion was correct to begin with - and the damp spot proves it.
Politics to physics, AI or art. There is no puddle too shallow that it can't be reduced further to reporting on what the reporting said about the reporting.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing so is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse our idiocy.
I completely agree with that. But unless and until we have those alternatives to oil for energy we must use our own rather than importing other peoples. The policies of trying to minimise our oil usage and extract as much of our own oil and gas as possible are not incompatible. Only a Miliband could conclude that they were.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
I think Casino_Royale suggested that part of the problem for environmentalists is that for every 10 pragmatic cyclists (like me, I hope), there is 1 loony that undermines the whole cause.
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all to easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
We need to wean ourselves off burning gas for fuel as soon as possible. We also shouldn’t be using it to fuel our cars. We will still need oil for chemical production, agriculture, medicine, plastics and many others. Not all oil extraction is bad. Some of it will continue to be essential. Politicians, civil servants and journalists won’t understand that, because they are not scientists or engineers. In fact, while we value a PPE degree from Oxford over an Engineering degree from Imperial College, Strathclyde or indeed Oxford, there is no hope of advancement.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
Are you OK with it being illegal to sell pork products in Israel? (Some shops run by Russian immigrants break the law and pay the fines.)
Why the feck would you try and divert a reasonable argument about vegan food/menus into an argument about Israel????
On the subject of weaning ourselves off natural gas because it's imported. That's not a great argument: because you will end up importing energy one way or another. You don't increase your reslience to external shocks by also having coal fired power stations, because the price of gas and coal move in lockstep, because they are both calories.
Let the market decide.
(And the market will decide on gas, because - globally - it is massively abundant, burns cleanly, and it is much better at being switched on and off than coal.)
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
As an aside, @Richard_Tyndall's fundamental point - that you concentrate on the demand side of the equation - is absolutely correct. There is exactly zero benefit to preventing UK exploitation of hydrocarbons, and all it does is make sure that where they are extracted (and they will be extracted because demand creates supply), will probably have worse envrionmental and labour standards.
His point about making Directors legally responsible for clean ups is also spot on: otherwise you have a heads I win, tails you lose type situation.
Absolutely, I posted before about lenders wanting to see “the pain” when they lent big sums. Effectively they wanted to know that a developer had their own assets and future on the line if they failed/mess up so that they didn’t just assume that they could take the piss by walking away after going bust having their home etc untouchable.
If these directors of large companies, whether oil and gas, finance etc want huge bonuses and performance pay then they also need to be personally on the hook if their decisions are wrong. They can’t have the upside and claim huge sums because of their “genius” and then when things go wrong it’s suddenly not down to them.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing so is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse our idiocy.
I completely agree with that. But unless and until we have those alternatives to oil for energy we must use our own rather than importing other peoples. The policies of trying to minimise our oil usage and extract as much of our own oil and gas as possible are not incompatible. Only a Miliband could conclude that they were.
That argument doesn't follow at all because we don't use our own oil for energy. We export it or use it for other stuff, more production will not affect our imports.
There is only an economic argument for domestic oil production (and a very strong one at that).
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
Agreed
I like to think of myself as well-informed - I certainly read enough news - but I had no idea we had such relatively healthy reserves. Nor that we are disregarding them in such a criminally idiotic way
That's why we need someine like Richard in parliament. Seriously. Someone who actively knows what they are talking about, who can expose the Miliband agenda for the farcical pantomine it, apparently, is
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
Richard, would it be conceivable that you and like minded colleagues could preserve detailed records of what steps you are having to take now, so that at some future date those steps may be retraced and undone with the minimum of delay and cost to the country?
Rather like those brave museum curators, in Greece, who reburied the classical treasures to keep them from falling into German hands.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
I think Casino_Royale suggested that part of the problem for environmentalists is that for every 10 pragmatic cyclists (like me, I hope), there is 1 loony that undermines the whole cause.
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all to easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
We need to wean ourselves off burning gas for fuel as soon as possible. We also shouldn’t be using it to fuel our cars. We will still need oil for chemical production, agriculture, medicine, plastics and many others. Not all oil extraction is bad. Some of it will continue to be essential. Politicians, civil servants and journalists won’t understand that, because they are not scientists or engineers. In fact, while we value a PPE degree from Oxford over an Engineering degree from Imperial College, Strathclyde or indeed Oxford, there is no hope of advancement.
My work still refers to Strathclyde Uni in a disdainful tone as Strath Tech.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
Agreed
I like to think of myself as well-informed - I certainly read enough news - but I had no idea we had such relatively healthy reserves. Nor that we are disregarding them in such a criminally idiotic way
That's why we need someine like Richard in parliament. Seriously. Someone who actively knows what they are talking about, who can expose the Miliband agenda for the farcical pantomine it, apparently, is
I thought we had millions of people in Westminster lurking here so you would hope they might pick this up as it’s been so clearly and well argued. Maybe we don’t have the right people reading, or maybe they don’t give a monkey’s.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing so is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse our idiocy.
I completely agree with that. But unless and until we have those alternatives to oil for energy we must use our own rather than importing other peoples. The policies of trying to minimise our oil usage and extract as much of our own oil and gas as possible are not incompatible. Only a Miliband could conclude that they were.
That argument doesn't follow at all because we don't use our own oil for energy. We export it or use it for other stuff, more production will not affect our imports.
There is only an economic argument for domestic oil production (and a very strong one at that).
The main reason we export most of our oil is because we have allowed our refining capacity to fall into desuetude and therefore have to import products refined elsewhere. It is another consequence of an imbecilic industrial policy costing us skilled jobs, a manufacturing base and complete indifference to our balance of payments. Once Grangemouth closes we will have the capacity to process something like 1% of our production. Utter, utter madness.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
I think Casino_Royale suggested that part of the problem for environmentalists is that for every 10 pragmatic cyclists (like me, I hope), there is 1 loony that undermines the whole cause.
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all to easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
We need to wean ourselves off burning gas for fuel as soon as possible. We also shouldn’t be using it to fuel our cars. We will still need oil for chemical production, agriculture, medicine, plastics and many others. Not all oil extraction is bad. Some of it will continue to be essential. Politicians, civil servants and journalists won’t understand that, because they are not scientists or engineers. In fact, while we value a PPE degree from Oxford over an Engineering degree from Imperial College, Strathclyde or indeed Oxford, there is no hope of advancement.
My work still refers to Strathclyde Uni in a disdainful tone as Strath Tech.
That's stupid. It's an excellent university, some of the best business courses in the country and wins all sorts of awards. Fraser of Allander is a useful stop for any info on what is going on in Scotland's economy.
There are some interesting points - I do agree there is a huge vulnerability among our various interconnected systems to attack and assault. We talk about cyber-sabotage from places like Russia and North Korea but such things would be possible here.
I believe one of the terms is "inconvenience terrorism" - we've already seen examples of this with payment and delivery systems hacked at major supermarkets or stores but you could go further and look at hacking into the transport infrastructure to affect signals and signalling - the implications of which could be horrendous.
I suspect if we're talking some form of domestic terror, we'd be looking at that. The other obvious concern is inter-communal (and indeed intra-communal) violence which would be a reflection of events happening elsewhere in the world (and we've seen that as well). My personal worry is or would be the domestic implications of an India-Pakistan war (in my area you have south Indians and Pakistanis in close proximity both in terms of residences and businesses).
One of the arguments for keeping asylum seekers in one place is they are all together and can be protected - putting them in numbers of HMOs makes them vulnerable and as we saw in parts of eastern Germany the risk of the lynch mob firebombing known dwellings where asylum seekers are believed to have been placed can't be underestimated.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
The story that our reserves are fast disappearing was used to justify why Scottish independence wouldn’t work, without thinking about any other consequences. Another example of politicians not being able to think about the wider implications of their actions.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
Agreed
I like to think of myself as well-informed - I certainly read enough news - but I had no idea we had such relatively healthy reserves. Nor that we are disregarding them in such a criminally idiotic way
That's why we need someine like Richard in parliament. Seriously. Someone who actively knows what they are talking about, who can expose the Miliband agenda for the farcical pantomine it, apparently, is
Brought to mind a quote from Babbage:
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
Why has there been no campaign to properly air this before the public ? It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
Agreed
I like to think of myself as well-informed - I certainly read enough news - but I had no idea we had such relatively healthy reserves. Nor that we are disregarding them in such a criminally idiotic way
That's why we need someine like Richard in parliament. Seriously. Someone who actively knows what they are talking about, who can expose the Miliband agenda for the farcical pantomine it, apparently, is
I thought we had millions of people in Westminster lurking here so you would hope they might pick this up as it’s been so clearly and well argued. Maybe we don’t have the right people reading, or maybe they don’t give a monkey’s.
I might do a Gazette piece on this. It is BONKERS
As for the Westminster elite, I long ago concluded that they are not just selfish, venal, Woke, etc, they are really properly DUMB. I have a close friend who is deep into politics, and meets them all, and she confirms this. They're just fucking stupid
Anyine with brains avoids politics, these days, it's not worth the hassle. This is particularly true of Britain and we are now really paying for this intellectual mediocrity
Starmer is a plodding 110 IQ halfwit, Reeves is possibly dumber, certainly more pathetic - weeping in parliament. Lammy can barely walk and sip latte at the same time. Badenoch is a polytechnic student. Ed Davey should be a slightly amusing librarian. God help us
This is why Farage shines. He is clever. He's not a genius, but merely by being clever he stands out
What is this nonsense ? The US administration seems to believe it has the right to force an unstable peace, on disadvantageous terms to Ukraine, and then take no responsibility for policing it.
Given it's Europe's future that's at stake, and Europe that's expected to pay for Ukraine's security, why do they get to decide our future ?
Russia will “have some stake” in discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine — US Vice President J.D. Vance.
“How can you reasonably provide security guarantees without talking to the Russians about what would be necessary to bring the war to a close?” Vance said during an NBC News interview.
Vance also reiterated that the US won't deploy American military personnel to Ukraine, while emphasizing that European nations and other countries would take on significant responsibilities. https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1959875270610989128
If the USA has no skin in the game, then why indeed, should Vance’s opinions be of significance?
Surely because at the end of the day Europe expects at least a US backstop. No other explanation makes sense. I'm surprised this needs spelling out on here.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
As someone who tried to incorporate plant based food into his diet for a long while, is a bit queasy about red meat, and has some admiration for Rangers manager Russell Martin, I have to say his approach to the game is so on point for a vegan, Buddhist who is a member of the Green party. Absolutely 100% woke
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
I think Casino_Royale suggested that part of the problem for environmentalists is that for every 10 pragmatic cyclists (like me, I hope), there is 1 loony that undermines the whole cause.
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all to easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
We need to wean ourselves off burning gas for fuel as soon as possible. We also shouldn’t be using it to fuel our cars. We will still need oil for chemical production, agriculture, medicine, plastics and many others. Not all oil extraction is bad. Some of it will continue to be essential. Politicians, civil servants and journalists won’t understand that, because they are not scientists or engineers. In fact, while we value a PPE degree from Oxford over an Engineering degree from Imperial College, Strathclyde or indeed Oxford, there is no hope of advancement.
My work still refers to Strathclyde Uni in a disdainful tone as Strath Tech.
That's stupid. It's an excellent university, some of the best business courses in the country and wins all sorts of awards. Fraser of Allander is a useful stop for any info on what is going on in Scotland's economy.
I offered no opinion. That's just the view of the 'proper' academics.
Although opening up the debate about 'University' vs. 'Polytechnic' vs. 'College' is always good.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
It is actively insane
Please stand for parliament
What is insane is extracting and burning fossil fuels for any longer than is absolutely necessary, given that the ultimate consequence of doing so is the inundation of large parts of our country. Future generations will look back and curse our idiocy.
I completely agree with that. But unless and until we have those alternatives to oil for energy we must use our own rather than importing other peoples. The policies of trying to minimise our oil usage and extract as much of our own oil and gas as possible are not incompatible. Only a Miliband could conclude that they were.
That argument doesn't follow at all because we don't use our own oil for energy. We export it or use it for other stuff, more production will not affect our imports.
There is only an economic argument for domestic oil production (and a very strong one at that).
The main reason we export most of our oil is because we have allowed our refining capacity to fall into desuetude and therefore have to import products refined elsewhere. It is another consequence of an imbecilic industrial policy costing us skilled jobs, a manufacturing base and complete indifference to our balance of payments. Once Grangemouth closes we will have the capacity to process something like 1% of our production. Utter, utter madness.
The trouble with Grangemouth was it was running down for decades. You would have had to build it up again from not much and there are other refineries in the UK, so it would be difficult to justify for a significant government intervention.
They should chuck some of MaxPBs SMRs onto the site.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
What is Findlay saying that you object to??
Do you think banners with 'Kill 'em all' written on them should be part of lawful demonstrations?
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
As someone who tried to incorporate plant based food into his diet for a long while, is a bit queasy about red meat, and has some admiration for Rangers manager Russell Martin, I have to say his approach to the game is so on point for a vegan, Buddhist who is a member of the Green party. Absolutely 100% woke
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
As someone who tried to incorporate plant based food into his diet for a long while, is a bit queasy about red meat, and has some admiration for Rangers manager Russell Martin, I have to say his approach to the game is so on point for a vegan, Buddhist who is a member of the Green party. Absolutely 100% woke
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
What is Findlay saying that you object to??
Do you think banners with 'Kill 'em all' written on them should be part of lawful demonstrations?
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
The Government's view is that we will be using so much less oil soon that this isn't an issue. (Yes, oil has other uses than being burnt, but they make up about 6% of current oil usage. If you stop burning oil, you only need 6% of the current production, although that's an average and some fields will be more useful than others.)
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
What is Findlay saying that you object to??
Do you think banners with 'Kill 'em all' written on them should be part of lawful demonstrations?
Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels per day so that's 3,285 million (or 3 billion) every year so what we have left is one year of Saudi Aarabia's production (for a bit of context).
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
While the Norwegians expand their oil and gas industry, we continue to self-flagellate our industry.
Yep. I was lucky and got a good offer consulting in shutting down oil fields. Most of my colleagues are either retiring or moving overseas. It is not just Norway, the whole of the rest of the world is expanding O&G production. Even New Zealand has reversed its idiotic decision to end drilling.
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
I think that is the key point - we need to make a distinction between consumption and production. This is my take (and I'm quite open to persuasion):
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
2) we justify this by linking climate change to the burning of oil and gas, rather than its production.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
UK and Norwegian oil is some of the highest quality in the world. It is used for lubricants and a million* other products. This is why it is too good to burn but also why we should not be shuttingdown production.
*excuse the hyperbole
Richard, would it be conceivable that you and like minded colleagues could preserve detailed records of what steps you are having to take now, so that at some future date those steps may be retraced and undone with the minimum of delay and cost to the country?
Rather like those brave museum curators, in Greece, who reburied the classical treasures to keep them from falling into German hands.
I think Richard made it clear that the work to close down wells safely (along with their associated infrastructure) made it thoroughly uneconomic to reopen them ?
Approximately how many years before the situation is essentially irrecoverable, Richard ?
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I'm right in the middle of that crowd and while you get a small minority with views like that, most people are pretty pragmatic about what path we should take. A lot of the culture war stuff is projection from the right.
E.g. "car bans" = LTNs and pedestrianisation, both of which have been uncontroversial topics advocated for by both parties for several decades. I've never had a vegan make much of a fuss about their diet other than a polite request, but have certainly come across carnivores driven close to madness by their very existence.
It's just a lash tbh.
I agree most people in this country are naturally pragmatic, but of course it's always the other side that "started" the culture war.
I'm not sure you've met many vegans though. It's the first thing they say, and then they passively aggressively demand you accommodate them - which usually means levelling down to their level, to avoid giving "offence" - which is why they drive many omnivores mad.
I think you're proving my point. It's basic courtesy to work around what people prefer, their beliefs or whatever as long as it doesn't cost us much to do so. The fact you're so upset about it proves that it's ultimately projection. You're the offended one, the passive aggressive one with all the grumbling.
It's a bit annoying for me because I eat meat (though not much beef) but I'll accommodate my friends at my BBQs because I'm not an arsehole.
No, I've attended several industry events and conferences were the meal was "vegan" or "plant-based" with no forewarning - or choice - offered to those who were not. It was usually justified by a statement on 'cruelty-free' or climate-change.
Vegans exert a strong gravitational pull on the choices of others. Through fear of causing offence to them through serving or others consuming meat organisers and hosts often default to it on the basis that it's something "everyone can eat". This is done seemingly oblivious to the fact that by doing so they've directly made a choice on behalf of everyone else.
That's not accommodation, that's dictation. Which to me is something only an arsehole does. What drives carnivores (your words) mad is that they are then made out to be the offended ones whilst politely enduring their sanctimony under duress.
Well, why shouldn't they be? It's a basic courtesy for one's own choices not to affect or influence others.
That is the test vegans routinely fail.
If carnivores are now emulating it it's because they've learned that the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and politely suffering in silence gets you nowhere - and, in fact, concedes ground which vegans are quite happy to take.
Absolutely!
As a Carnivore I have never, ever tried to compel anyone to eat meat that doesn’t want to.
I have had meat free or plant based bullshit spread to me by others trying to make my diet somehow wrong or not catered for.
The polite thing to do is cater for everyone. Trying to make it all vegan or all carnivore when people of both stripes exist is immoral.
As someone who tried to incorporate plant based food into his diet for a long while, is a bit queasy about red meat, and has some admiration for Rangers manager Russell Martin, I have to say his approach to the game is so on point for a vegan, Buddhist who is a member of the Green party. Absolutely 100% woke
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
Because nothing matters more, not even the actual environment, than for Ed to be able to tell the world that the UK leads the world in cutting emissions/banishing fossil fuels. It’s a purity thing driven by extreme virtue signalling where the golden glow of righteousness is more important than the effects on the country they are elected to serve.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
What is Findlay saying that you object to??
Do you think banners with 'Kill 'em all' written on them should be part of lawful demonstrations?
Aye, but what does Scampers think, or you for that matter?
I'm content with direct calls to violence being illegal. Against a person or a group.
Indirect nudge nudge wink wink language, I'm less sure of. For example, the judge in the Jeremy Vine case claiming that someone calling him a "bike nonce" was literally calling him a pedophile.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
Because nothing matters more, not even the actual environment, than for Ed to be able to tell the world that the UK leads the world in cutting emissions/banishing fossil fuels. It’s a purity thing driven by extreme virtue signalling where the golden glow of righteousness is more important than the effects on the country they are elected to serve.
We aren't banishing them if we are importing them.
22 August. Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has quit the party saying it has "fallen into the trap of reactionary politics" under Russell Findlay's leadership.
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said. Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
Russell Findlay will end up getting pulled both ways on this issue and end up pleasing no one
Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels per day so that's 3,285 million (or 3 billion) every year so what we have left is one year of Saudi Aarabia's production (for a bit of context).
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
Because nothing matters more, not even the actual environment, than for Ed to be able to tell the world that the UK leads the world in cutting emissions/banishing fossil fuels. It’s a purity thing driven by extreme virtue signalling where the golden glow of righteousness is more important than the effects on the country they are elected to serve.
We aren't banishing them if we are importing them.
She’s clueless and just spouting hysterical nonsense . Sadly the only country that can stop the slaughter is the USA and they show zero interest in doing so .
She’s clueless and just spouting hysterical nonsense . Sadly the only country that can stop the slaughter is the USA and they show zero interest in doing so .
Hamas can stop the killings by surrendering at any time.
We should be providing Israel more weaponry and whatever aid they need to ensure that Hamas surrender comes sooner than later.
What is this nonsense ? The US administration seems to believe it has the right to force an unstable peace, on disadvantageous terms to Ukraine, and then take no responsibility for policing it.
Given it's Europe's future that's at stake, and Europe that's expected to pay for Ukraine's security, why do they get to decide our future ?
Russia will “have some stake” in discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine — US Vice President J.D. Vance.
“How can you reasonably provide security guarantees without talking to the Russians about what would be necessary to bring the war to a close?” Vance said during an NBC News interview.
Vance also reiterated that the US won't deploy American military personnel to Ukraine, while emphasizing that European nations and other countries would take on significant responsibilities. https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1959875270610989128
If the USA has no skin in the game, then why indeed, should Vance’s opinions be of significance?
Surely because at the end of the day Europe expects at least a US backstop. No other explanation makes sense. I'm surprised this needs spelling out on here.
Does anyone really believe the US will step up and provide the backstop, though?
Because right now, we (and the other European members of NATO) are expected to buy American, but aren't guaranteed that the US really wants to be in NATO. And are we sure that they will allow F35s to be used if they don't really approve of where we're using them?
Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels per day so that's 3,285 million (or 3 billion) every year so what we have left is one year of Saudi Aarabia's production (for a bit of context).
Well, I'm sure there is more than that.
But you do have to understand that oil saturated rock isn't like a water bottle you drain. As oil comes out the well, the pressure of the reservoir drops, and so you need to use techniques to maintain pressure. Modern offshore development is designed from day one with water injection to maintain reservoir pressure, but it still means that the percentage of water coming back up is ever rising (the water 'cut'). At some point, it becomes economically difficult to maintain because you're pulling out so much water relative to oil.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
There is no scenario where we can cease importing gas. Even if maximise production it will fall by over 50% by 2035.
We already import 66% of our gas. That proportion will increase to over 80% in the next decade unless we cut our consumption.
Tough match for Draper. Should have put it away in three sets.
His fitness won't be as good right now after his injury as it was pre wimbledon, but its night and day compared to 18 months ago. He had 3 x 5 setters before losing to Alcaraz at the Aus open
Has chance of a good run at Flushing Meadows and it's his best surface. Cant see past Sinner/Alcatraz for the trophy though
What is this nonsense ? The US administration seems to believe it has the right to force an unstable peace, on disadvantageous terms to Ukraine, and then take no responsibility for policing it.
Given it's Europe's future that's at stake, and Europe that's expected to pay for Ukraine's security, why do they get to decide our future ?
Russia will “have some stake” in discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine — US Vice President J.D. Vance.
“How can you reasonably provide security guarantees without talking to the Russians about what would be necessary to bring the war to a close?” Vance said during an NBC News interview.
Vance also reiterated that the US won't deploy American military personnel to Ukraine, while emphasizing that European nations and other countries would take on significant responsibilities. https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1959875270610989128
If the USA has no skin in the game, then why indeed, should Vance’s opinions be of significance?
Surely because at the end of the day Europe expects at least a US backstop. No other explanation makes sense. I'm surprised this needs spelling out on here.
Does anyone really believe the US will step up and provide the backstop, though?
Because right now, we (and the other European members of NATO) are expected to buy American, but aren't guaranteed that the US really wants to be in NATO. And are we sure that they will allow F35s to be used if they don't really approve of where we're using them?
Apparently when you buy weapons from Uncle Sam you can only use them with his permission, (Ukraine is ) "barred from cross-border strikes using the British-produced Storm Shadow, which is reliant on US targeting data." according to Kyiv Independent
What is this nonsense ? The US administration seems to believe it has the right to force an unstable peace, on disadvantageous terms to Ukraine, and then take no responsibility for policing it.
Given it's Europe's future that's at stake, and Europe that's expected to pay for Ukraine's security, why do they get to decide our future ?
Russia will “have some stake” in discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine — US Vice President J.D. Vance.
“How can you reasonably provide security guarantees without talking to the Russians about what would be necessary to bring the war to a close?” Vance said during an NBC News interview.
Vance also reiterated that the US won't deploy American military personnel to Ukraine, while emphasizing that European nations and other countries would take on significant responsibilities. https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1959875270610989128
If the USA has no skin in the game, then why indeed, should Vance’s opinions be of significance?
Surely because at the end of the day Europe expects at least a US backstop. No other explanation makes sense. I'm surprised this needs spelling out on here.
Does anyone really believe the US will step up and provide the backstop, though?
Because right now, we (and the other European members of NATO) are expected to buy American, but aren't guaranteed that the US really wants to be in NATO. And are we sure that they will allow F35s to be used if they don't really approve of where we're using them?
Anyone who believes with any confidence that either Trump, or Vance should he succeed him, would reliably provide any kind of backstop, is ignoring the evidence of the last few years.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
There is no scenario where we can cease importing gas. Even if maximise production it will fall by over 50% by 2035.
We already import 66% of our gas. That proportion will increase to over 80% in the next decade unless we cut our consumption.
So there are absolutely no reasons to restrict North Sea exploration and drilling then, right?
Naturally they’re starting with Tor first but I expect them to go after standard VPNs next.
Looks like we’ll be joining the very short list of countries that bans / licences access to VPNs at this rate, joining the illustrious brotherhood of countries that includes North Korea, Russia & a variety of other authoritarian regimes.
Fracking is culture war stuff, Reform have an annoying habit of trying to copy/emulate everything Trump does in the belief it's the key to electoral success here - whilst making themselves look nutjobs in the process. We almost certainly shouldn't be doing it, for both environmental and economic reasons, and it will be very unpopular.
However, it's a consequence of the dogma over Net Zero here - far too many activists want to hang eco-socialism, veganism, quasi-rationing, car-bans and anti-capitalism off the back of it, and make people pay far more for less.
It's the backlash to the lash.
I have a hunch that fracking in the UK would be a good idea.
You would be wrong.
It would be very good. For some people.
The path to profit from dry wells is quite simple.
1) you setup a new company to drill a well/frack a site. 2) you get a ton of investors - indeed your share of the project is quite small. 3) you need a company to actually drill the well. As luck would have it, you own just such a company. 4) the holes are all dry. The company doing the exploration goes bankrupt. You are not entirely downcast, however. Unlike your investors.
So you take the profits from your drilling company and buy the rights to look for oil/gas on a piece of land…
My dissillusionment with the whole oil industry started early in my career when I realised that there were instances where it was far better for company directors if we didn't find any oil than if we did. Very much smacked of an industry version of The Producers.
I'm curious about one thing with the whole fracking business: in the UK is it remotely even comparably economic to do it when there is clearly still oil and gas in the North Sea and there is the actual infrastructure there and the skills to just drill it out?
Norway announced last week they had discovered a whole ton more in one their zones thanks to improved discovery tech iirc.
Answer to your fracking question is no. It isn't. Even the guy who was running the project up outside Blackpool made that admission a couple of years ago.
Norway are going full on with exploration and expanding their oil and gas industry. Equinor - the rebranded Statoil - came out to the COSL Innovator where I was working in May to visit the crew as the rig was moving to Norway after the end of the UK contract. Their purpose was to reassure the Britsh crew that they would not be replaced by Norwegians. The reason was simple. They don't have the people to replace them. They are desperately short of rigs and experienced crews not least because they have plans to drill 120 wells over the next 2 years. That is just one company. In the UK we probably won't drill 10 wells in that same period.
The Norwegian Government has also given permssion for 42 E&A wells this year. The net cash flow to the Norwegian Government for Oil and Gas revenues in 2025 is predicted at 698 billion NOK - about £50 billion. And no small amount of that will be paid by the British taxpayer to import OIl and Gas from Norway as we are not producing it ourselves - and yes it is there. We have just made a political decision not to extract it.
Are our remaining reserves potentially of a similar magnitude ?
In the North Sea yes. The Norwegians also have the Norwegian and Barents Sea which bumps up their reserves a lot. We have West of Shetlands which helps with ours a lot as well. But we are continually finding new ways both to improve extraction of existing fields and find new reserves.
In which case, is Ed Milliband not in danger of beqeathing Nigel Farrage a North Sea funded boom similar to the one Mrs T found so helpful?
Sadly not. The Oil companies are pulling out and are shutting down the fields, removing infrastructure and properly abandoning wells. That is my job. Sealing the 640 odd wells on the Forties field to ensure they will not leak for the next several thousand years or more.
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
This is...pretty catastrophic really. Is there nobody in Government who reads PB or generally knows what is going on in government? Or is it all metropolitan elite headlines and podcasts? Rarely has there been a Government minister who I would be happy to see drop dead but Miliband really is a dumb [redacted word]
He just seems utterly incapable of understanding we will still need to burn gas for a long time yet under any kind of realistic Net Zero plan.
So why import it?
There is no scenario where we can cease importing gas. Even if maximise production it will fall by over 50% by 2035.
We already import 66% of our gas. That proportion will increase to over 80% in the next decade unless we cut our consumption.
With all due respect, so what?
We need to import energy. All energy prices are interlinked: when Ukraine was invaded you were just as badly hit if you imported coal or gas. Indeed, you were just as badly hit if you didn't import energy at all, because the price of energy still shot through the roof. Australia, energy self sufficient, massive coal reserves, etc., saw its electricity prices spike just as much from the invasion as our or Germany's.
The only places which didn't see prices spike were countries that had long-term renewables contracts on fixed prices: Switzerland with hydro and Spain/Portugal with wind.
We will be importing energy until the day comes when solar and batteries are so cheap that the cost of generating in the UK at low levels of efficiency is such that it is cheaper than the transport costs of bringing it from somewhere cheaper. And - by the way - that day is coming. It'll just be a while.
Comments
I am all for ending demand. Hydrocarbons are way to valuable a commodity to be burning - something that has been the case my whole career. So deal with demand, and let production shrink to match the market. The alterative is we just end up paying higher prices for oil and gas imports from other countries. Many of which (not Norway of course) have environmental and safety standards that would make Chernobyl look good.
Please stand for parliament
Trump: "A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1959994112251138356
1) We desperately need to get off gas as quickly as possible, because we have rapidly declining domestic production that we can't do anything about, already rely massively on imports, and it exposes us to global gas shocks. It's a huge security issue.
2) Oil is more complicated. Not all oil is the same; most of our production is exported, most of our consumption is imported*. It has the same security flaws as gas, but we still have significant reserves and therefore there is a strong economic rationale to increase production relative to our current path (though in even the most positive scenario production will halve by about 2035*). From a security POV, I think it's the same as gas ultimately and therefore we should reduce consumption as quickly as possible regardless of what happens with production.
The difficulty with 2) is how do we justify it internationally given our take on climate change. For me, I think it's to keep our net exports of oil at zero (which would be a relative increase in production) even as we reduce our consumption and therefore imports over time.
*let me know if either of these is incorrect.
Prof David Betz of KCL gives us a five year timeline to Ulsterisation and serious civil strife (and he puts a 50% chance on this, IIRC)
When he made this infamous prediction a few months ago he said that, firstly, we will see:
1. Aggressive assertion/demarcation of white British districts, rights, identity - with flags and protests
2. Signs of violent pushback against this by migrants and others
This last week we have seen "1" come true, and at the weekend (fights, petrol bombs) we saw "2" come true
So we are pretty much bang on his timeline, and he is a recognised global expert on civil disorder (who advises the MoD). Indeed it is arguable we are slightly ahead of schedule
For the purposes of clarity - if it is needed - I really clearly obviously hope he's wrong. I like a bit of excitement but there is a limit. Also, I had a lovely day today with my offspring. The sun shone, Kent looked lush, Battle was fun, I don't want my kids to graduate into a society in violent turmoil. And we still have time for a sensible government to do the things needed to avert the worst case scenario. Heck, maybe even this dumb Labour government will somehow find a way to do it
But hoping is all I can do, and I cannot deny that Betz might well be right
But if I recall correctly, because of the differences in licensing, with the Norwegians only releasing a few parcels at a time, the Norwegian North Sea is significantly less well explored than the British North Sea.
That's not to say there aren't some really promising areas, but it is likely there are fewer British opportunities than Norwegian ones.
I don't say we have no societal problems or potential for strife, but there seems to be a desire to make things particularly dramatic.
https://x.com/DearIain/status/1958411962368348604
By the time Miliband is driven from power much of the infrastructure will be gone. Even companies who want to carry on are being prevented from doing so because the GIvernment is allowing majrs to remove pipeline and distribution hubs. Last week's decision to allow Total to shut down the Gryphon FPSO which will also mean the end for a series of other companies who transport their oil through the hub. They will have to shut down and abandon their fields as well even though they are still economic.
I don't know why you aren't more concerned about the people who clearly are far right rather than dumping on people who haven't even done the thing you're complaining about.
What a national disgrace.
We are brassic and paying to ensure future generations are unable to recover any of the losses we are lumbering them with.
We can produce as much as we profitably can. That's no issue for climate. Its how much we consume via burning it that is the problem.
If we have net exports, then thats good news for our balance of trade and not an environmental concern.
According to the study done by Geoscience world in 2020 there have been 1637 exploration wells drilled in the UK sector. since the 1960s
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in 2017 they had drilled a total of 1654 exploration wells since exploration started in the 60s.
Now that is over a larger area admittedly but the numbers remain fairly similar.
https://x.com/theanfieldwrap/status/1959992691405754616?s=61
*excuse the hyperbole
"The UK has one of the most clownish and intolerable political castes that presently exists anywhere on the planet”.
https://mrstarstack.substack.com/p/london-bridge-is-falling-down?r=4a6bw9&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
25 August. It is "understandable" that people are protesting outside of hotels housing asylum seekers, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has said.
Russell Findlay insisted that "lawful" demonstrations were "entirely reasonable".
It seems that Jeremy Balfour is correct.
Try actually reading what is being written in the thread and then think about a sensible response.
IIRC 99% of medicines depend upon hydrocarbons.
We have a regime that in multiple ways, is actively conspiring to make British lives worse. Poorer, sadder, crappier, maybe even more violent. This needs a reckoning, not just an election defeat. Until the Nu10k learn that there can be a real and severe price for their narcissistic lunacy and incompetence, they will keep doing it
I think the same applies to you. For all your persuasive arguments, you can be undercut by a Luckyguy1983 who advocates for coal and fracking and is all too easy to dismiss. My only observation is that I think you need to be more honest about the direction the North Sea production is going in regardless of Energy Secretary, particularly on gas which is dwindling rapidly. Otherwise it's all very compelling.
(Or Leon who is wittering on about getting a guillotine out or something).
So, it's about 1,200 Norwegian wildcat wells against around 2,000 for the UK.
Politics to physics, AI or art. There is no puddle too shallow that it can't be reduced further to reporting on what the reporting said about the reporting.
The left is obsessed with Israel
Let the market decide.
(And the market will decide on gas, because - globally - it is massively abundant, burns cleanly, and it is much better at being switched on and off than coal.)
It would make about 100x more sense than the fracking thing.
As it is, I’d bet than something like 9 in 10 of the public who actually have an opinion on the matter would say that our reserves are in deep decline.
If these directors of large companies, whether oil and gas, finance etc want huge bonuses and performance pay then they also need to be personally on the hook if their decisions are wrong. They can’t have the upside and claim huge sums because of their “genius” and then when things go wrong it’s suddenly not down to them.
Would focus minds.
There is only an economic argument for domestic oil production (and a very strong one at that).
I like to think of myself as well-informed - I certainly read enough news - but I had no idea we had such relatively healthy reserves. Nor that we are disregarding them in such a criminally idiotic way
That's why we need someine like Richard in parliament. Seriously. Someone who actively knows what they are talking about, who can expose the Miliband agenda for the farcical pantomine it, apparently, is
Rather like those brave museum curators, in Greece, who reburied the classical treasures to keep them from falling into German hands.
This is a summation of the Betz argument:
https://blog.alor.org/the-future-of-the-west-is-civil-war-professor-david-betz-by-james-reed
There are some interesting points - I do agree there is a huge vulnerability among our various interconnected systems to attack and assault. We talk about cyber-sabotage from places like Russia and North Korea but such things would be possible here.
I believe one of the terms is "inconvenience terrorism" - we've already seen examples of this with payment and delivery systems hacked at major supermarkets or stores but you could go further and look at hacking into the transport infrastructure to affect signals and signalling - the implications of which could be horrendous.
I suspect if we're talking some form of domestic terror, we'd be looking at that. The other obvious concern is inter-communal (and indeed intra-communal) violence which would be a reflection of events happening elsewhere in the world (and we've seen that as well). My personal worry is or would be the domestic implications of an India-Pakistan war (in my area you have south Indians and Pakistanis in close proximity both in terms of residences and businesses).
One of the arguments for keeping asylum seekers in one place is they are all together and can be protected - putting them in numbers of HMOs makes them vulnerable and as we saw in parts of eastern Germany the risk of the lynch mob firebombing known dwellings where asylum seekers are believed to have been placed can't be underestimated.
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
As for the Westminster elite, I long ago concluded that they are not just selfish, venal, Woke, etc, they are really properly DUMB. I have a close friend who is deep into politics, and meets them all, and she confirms this. They're just fucking stupid
Anyine with brains avoids politics, these days, it's not worth the hassle. This is particularly true of Britain and we are now really paying for this intellectual mediocrity
Starmer is a plodding 110 IQ halfwit, Reeves is possibly dumber, certainly more pathetic - weeping in parliament. Lammy can barely walk and sip latte at the same time. Badenoch is a polytechnic student. Ed Davey should be a slightly amusing librarian. God help us
This is why Farage shines. He is clever. He's not a genius, but merely by being clever he stands out
Although opening up the debate about 'University' vs. 'Polytechnic' vs. 'College' is always good.
2 goal away lead versus 10 men. Who needs Isak?
They should chuck some of MaxPBs SMRs onto the site.
Should have put it away in three sets.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ricky-jones-labour-councillor-cutting-throats-anti-racism-rally-b2806985.html
So why import it?
https://www.rigzone.com/news/regulator_reveals_latest_uk_oil_gas_reserves_estimate-23-oct-2024-178513-article/#:~:text=In a statement posted on its website, the,2023 is 3.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels per day so that's 3,285 million (or 3 billion) every year so what we have left is one year of Saudi Aarabia's production (for a bit of context).
Approximately how many years before the situation is essentially irrecoverable, Richard ?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/nov/23/russell-martin-footballer-joined-green-party-walsall
Zarah Sultana MP
@zarahsultana
·
8h
Keir Starmer and David Lammy belong in The Hague.
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1959953478970667405
Indirect nudge nudge wink wink language, I'm less sure of. For example, the judge in the Jeremy Vine case claiming that someone calling him a "bike nonce" was literally calling him a pedophile.
We should be providing Israel more weaponry and whatever aid they need to ensure that Hamas surrender comes sooner than later.
Because right now, we (and the other European members of NATO) are expected to buy American, but aren't guaranteed that the US really wants to be in NATO. And are we sure that they will allow F35s to be used if they don't really approve of where we're using them?
But you do have to understand that oil saturated rock isn't like a water bottle you drain. As oil comes out the well, the pressure of the reservoir drops, and so you need to use techniques to maintain pressure. Modern offshore development is designed from day one with water injection to maintain reservoir pressure, but it still means that the percentage of water coming back up is ever rising (the water 'cut'). At some point, it becomes economically difficult to maintain because you're pulling out so much water relative to oil.
We already import 66% of our gas. That proportion will increase to over 80% in the next decade unless we cut our consumption.
Has chance of a good run at Flushing Meadows and it's his best surface. Cant see past Sinner/Alcatraz for the trophy though
And indeed, the pair's own public statements.
Naturally they’re starting with Tor first but I expect them to go after standard VPNs next.
Looks like we’ll be joining the very short list of countries that bans / licences access to VPNs at this rate, joining the illustrious brotherhood of countries that includes North Korea, Russia & a variety of other authoritarian regimes.
We need to import energy. All energy prices are interlinked: when Ukraine was invaded you were just as badly hit if you imported coal or gas. Indeed, you were just as badly hit if you didn't import energy at all, because the price of energy still shot through the roof. Australia, energy self sufficient, massive coal reserves, etc., saw its electricity prices spike just as much from the invasion as our or Germany's.
The only places which didn't see prices spike were countries that had long-term renewables contracts on fixed prices: Switzerland with hydro and Spain/Portugal with wind.
We will be importing energy until the day comes when solar and batteries are so cheap that the cost of generating in the UK at low levels of efficiency is such that it is cheaper than the transport costs of bringing it from somewhere cheaper. And - by the way - that day is coming. It'll just be a while.
Until that day, gas outcompetes everything.
@Acyn
Reporter: It requires an act of congress to rename the Defense Department
Trump: We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will just go along
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1960072444716450087