Hugh Sharman | Claverton Group

Fundamental Drivers and Probable Trends 2008 to 2020

Hugh SharmanThe mindless and self-congratulatory drift and chatter in the UK’s energy area during the last fifteen years, in particular the last ten, has the UK sleep-walking into brown-outs and/or severe energy rationing in less time than it takes to plan, engineer, license, procure, build and commission more than 30 GW in new, “clean coal” or nuclear plant by 1st January 2016.

Some gas capacity is on its way but this will be commissioned just in time for a World gas-supply crunch, sparked by the serial failure of Indonesia to meet its Far East contractual commitments, continued decline of gas production in Russia and Canada, the cap on new LNG exports from Qatar and exports from Norway and the continued reluctance of Iran to develop any gas export business at all. Most seriously of all, for UK (and Europe), it is the deliberately contrived investment policy of Gazprom to remain very tight on upstream capacity far into the foreseeable future, while dominant in down-stream infrastructure.