A short time ago, following an article in the February 2015 Issue of Materials World Magazine on “Inside Fracking Fluids” I wrote a letter pointing out that it overlooked one of the most important constituents ” fracking sand”. The article is available on the internet My letter was based on what I had read in an American […]
Read MoreDear Clavertonians, Received this from Mobbsey the other week (see below)…wondered if any of you could locate a “leak” of this particular British Government document to share with the rest of us even though David MacKay couldn’t get his paws on one…we owe it to our nation to tell the truth…can’t remember how to conjugate […]
Read MoreThe journal Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Energy enourages submissions on the topic of Clean Fossil Fuels. Here is the call for papers:
Read MoreFolks In the run up to the UK election, evidence of an imminent global oil crunch has continued to build, un-noticed by the majority of people, almost entirely uncommented on in the election campaign. The CEO of a major oil company has admitted it no longer pays to build up new oil reserves. A US military panel has […]
Read More“Recently, OPEC cut back oil production in an attempt to stem the oil price decline. How much might their cutbacks delay the onset of world liquid fuels production decline? Assuming the plateau model and five years to the onset of decline, each million barrels per day of oil production withholding buys roughly three weeks delay, so a steady, continuing reduction of say four million barrels per day over five years might result in a delay in the onset of world oil production decline by maybe three months. Thats not very much.”
Read MoreHeadline in the Guardian article covering this, Jan 12th says it all “Plans to Increase Britain’s gas storage capacity left in tatters by credit crunch” What did the economists at Ofgem expect? Only an economist would have any faith in the Market’s ability to replace central planning. Having bemoaned the fact that UK only has […]
Read MoreFundamental 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.
Read MoreWhile the oil market survived the recent storm surge of money, the inevitability of future waves of speculative money sweeping into the market, mean that an oil market meltdown is an accident waiting to happen. To follow the US approach to regulation of oil futures markets would be to try and solve today’s problems with yesterday’s tools.
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