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"We will power ahead with new oil and gas"

https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/1685898044791828480

I do hope you performative wally's are going to fly out to Saudi Arabia and make a peaceful protest there.

Tom, for one, will find his overlords very accomodating.

I struggle with this. We are going to continue to use oil and gas for the next 20 years at least. Can someone who is opposed to this policy explain why it is better from a climate change perspective to produce that oil and gas thousands of miles away and ship it to the UK? 

That is a genuine question. I don't know. 

Surely the carbon footprint of production and shipping is lower if we do it in the UK? 

 

the carbon emissions from transporting oil or gas are but a smidgeon of dust on the underside of the elephant of total emissions of and relating from oil and gas production, before you even consider the combustion stage

How long will it take to get this oil and gas going? When the Tories opposed this last year part of that rationale is it would take years to actually produce anything. 

Still, I'm sort of afraid this Climate vs. Money in your pocket culture war is going to work and the Cons start closing the polling gap. Starmer will abolish all the vague green promises Labour has made so far and, even then, may still lose the election.

Okaaaayyy Heff. So it is the case that producing oil and gas in (say) Saudi Arabia or Russia and shipping it to the UK produces less emissions than producing it in the UK?

 

 

Which is to say Sunak was just outright lying when he said "When we reach net zero in 2050, a quarter of our energy needs will still come from oil and gas, and domestic gas production has about a quarter or a third of the carbon footprint of imported gas"?

 

Also as far as I can tell even in a best case scenario domestic gas reserves would last less than a decade, so they are just spouting shit. This is just virtue signalling to the usual 25% in the hope they are not wiped out. 

Also I assume the UK has signed exclusive rights to the produced oil and gas? 

“I do hope you performative wally's are going to fly out to Saudi Arabia and make a peaceful protest there.”

Why the fvck would we do that? Nobody here has any right to expect to hold the saudi government to account for anything.

producing fossil energy domestically absokutely is meaningfully less carbon impactful than importing it over thousands of miles

it absolutely is, sorry

What an absolute disgrace the current crop of Conservatives are.

They spent the last few years blocking licences for wind farms. They want to ban wind, but encourage new oil & gas? Its awful. 

I'm team "you may as well produce your own rather than import oil/gas. especially when you have to use oil/gas before new nuclear power stations come on board."

 

in short, "just stop oil" people make no sense. non-shocka

producing fossil energy domestically absokutely is meaningfully less carbon impactful than importing it over thousands of miles

it absolutely is, sorry

Not if you first have to build all the installations and infrastructure.

It doesn't really matter much where and how the oil that comes out of the ground is being used. The only way to limit the effect of oil consumption on our climate is to keep it underground. Opening new fields adds CO2. The Saudis (or other oil sellers) are not going to leave more oil in their wells because the UK taps its own. 

crap

the emissions associated with oil and gas production are driven by a large range of issues such as whether it is onshore or offshore, the depth of the well, the age of well, the efficiency of the equipment used, the ease with which hydrocarbons are emitted from the well, whether injection etc is required, nature of the production environment, the means by which the hydrocarbons are transported from well to onward transmission facilities (pipelines or FPSO or whatever) and loads of other things 

by comparison with all that the emissions associated with transporting the product by tanker even half way across the world are relatively low

don’t get me wrong, I still think this is all cobblers and just a political stunt

happily for world ecology, it’s not gonna happen because (1) the U.K. is an unattractive place for energy investment for all kinds of reasons and (2) more importantly, it’s a conservative government idea.

crap

I understand that all this matters for the CO2 release associated with the barrel of oil you use for your car here, but for global warming that's completely irrelevant.

There's no point in reducing your personal (or our national) CO2 footprint, if we do so by adding more oil to the total amount the world will burn. Only the total amount of oil burnt is relevant. And only reducing the total amount we take from the earth can help to minimise global warming.

We stopped buying Russian energy last winter.  Or at least had to buy it rebranded through a 3rd party country. 

Prices went mentalz - we put coal power stations on standby because we honestly thought there was a chance of blackouts.

Would you rather

- freeze to death.

- not freeze to death but pay shi1t loads for your energy.

- get cheap energy from Uncle Vlad (whilst virtue signalling for Ukraine).

- we had energy security by drilling a few new fields.

 

I could maybe get on board with the idea for energy security purposes if it meant we would stop importing all foreign oil gas from other countries and we also made significant efforts to reduce our overall use of fossil fuels and significantly increased investment in renewables. But none of that is going to happen is it. 

this is total crap

any new north sea oil or gas would be sold on the market at market prices

market prices won't be meaningfully impacted by whatever the north sea still has to offer

No issue with this in principle - if we’re going to use oil and gas for years yet (which we are whatever we claim) we might as well produce it at home. I do object to the artificial deadlines for net zero etc and I do object to the lack of a holistic and consistent approach to energy generation.

The sheer number of lies being told in support of this policy, and the traction they get with even educated members of the public (as this thread shows), is just depressing.

Granting new licences will do next to nothing to improve our energy security, there are loads of (other) things we could do in short order that genuinely would improve energy security, and by granting new licences we lose any kind of moral authority to get larger producers to refrain from allowing new exploration.

The planet is phucked. 

Larger producers aren't going refrain from new exploration ffs. That is pie in the sky.  For so long as there is demand for fossil fuels, people will pull it out of the ground to meet that demand.  This has to be tackled demand side. 

Also, having the ability to produce domestically clearly does improve energy security ffs. Saying it all goes into the open market is true, but only for so long as there is enough to go round. The US has banned exports in the past and if the situation got bad enough the UK could do the same. 

This may well be a bad idea but unless Sunak is lying about the carbon emissions involved in production I am still not sure I understand why.

If we are going to be burning gas for at least 20 years and we can produce gas and get it to consumers while producing less carbon than through alternatives it seems a bit weird not to do so. 

 

 

Sunak is completely misrepresenting the emissions involved, in a way that is so disingenuous he might as well be lying.

Regarding larger oil producing countries, I agree that the chances of persuading them to reduce emissions are low, but if the UK and other significant economies give up even trying (which this policy represents), then we truly are phucked. We will have lost al credibility.

Regarding energy security, the effect on energy security is marginal at best, and if the existence of new o&g coming on-stream in 20 years’ time is used to justify not investing in quicker, cheaper and more sustainable energy infrastructure now, it’s detrimental to energy security in the long term.

Listen to all the performative zealots. They want to feck the country simply because it looks good to the rest of the world.

Just how stupid are they?

 

 

 

Just how stupid are they?

THEY ARE STUPID ENOUGH NOT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WILL LOWER THE PRICE OF OIL AND GAS IN THE UK!!

AND THEY ALSO THINK THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL LOL!!

I DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT TWITTER LINK

Rishi Sunak's family's business Infosys boasts of its partnership with "two of the top five integrated oil and gas companies, three of the top four oilfield services providers, and five of the top 10 upstream enterprises across the oil and gas landscape.”

HOW IS THIS RELEVANT?!?

NO BUT REALLY, I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS:

Rishi Sunak's family's business Infosys boasts of its partnership with "two of the top five integrated oil and gas companies, three of the top four oilfield services providers, and five of the top 10 upstream enterprises across the oil and gas landscape.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?

Line in Telegraph today:

 

Meanwhile, Sweden – the country that triggered the stampede towards enshrining net zero into law back in 2017 – has quietly abandoned its pledge to be 100 per cent renewable by 2045.

 

Thought this was worth checking out. Seems they've actually just modified the pledge. Now it's to be "fossil-fuel free" (so clarifying the the 30% it gets from existing nuclear plants may continue and the option to add additional nuclear capacity). 

Shameless stuff from the telegraph. 

Don't get the outrage over this one. We need fossil fuels, will continue to need them for decades. I don't know if there's practically anything left in the North Sea, but if there is it's better that we use it than buy it in from Saudi Arabia. The idea that it isn't is the weirdest tic of liberal Britain. 

Genuine heh @ abandoning our moral authority. 

We have no moral authority. The world is not looking for our lead on this issue. 

We need oil and gas so are one of the major customers of these states we're apparently going to pressure into not producing it.

And no-one gives a shit. The USA is going to hit their all-time highest annual oil output this year. They're also passed the IRA, which will do more for the development and expansion of renewables than every insane degrowth plan Britain can possibly dream up. 

Who cares if the oil stays here? Just the daftest nonsense. The process of extracting, refining and selling it levies generates enormous amounts of tax revenues and supports loads of high-value jobs. 

That's money that grows the economy that makes Britain wealthier and supports the development of greener infrastructure. Norway isn't rich because they use all the oil themselves. We will never impoverish ourselves into being green.

Though even on its own terms that video is just wilfully illiterate shite. Whether North Sea gas was sold directly to the UK or not, significant new regional supply would increase the amount available across western europe and decrease the level of buyer competition. 

Agree. This weird stuff that we should be a ‘world leader’ in tackling climate change, or anything for that matter. We’re not the world’s policeman and we shouldn’t be trying to. We are a middling income country with a lot of internal problems to resolve. 

I wouldn't overplay their contribution. Oil and gas in total doesn't provide a huge number of jobs (maybe 200k taking all direct and indirect positions), and contributes £11bn in tax vs. £250bn from income tax (and likely dwarfed by what polluting and congesting drivers should be charged given London takes £225m from a tiny area). That's the total figure - these new projects will likely contribute fook all compared to that as North Sea reserves are dwindling and expensive to extract. 

This is about giving Tory donors a lift and scoring political points recycling previously announced policies to promote a marginal industry. The best thing to do is ask "what would a spiv do" in examining the motives for anything this bunch of bent zombies would do. 

Where does the income tax come from? Aberdeen is literally the only place in the UK outside south-east with >2% of residents in the top 1% income bracket.

The fact that Britain needs industry and economic activity to become a better place (even a greener place) seems totally lost on the UK electorate. 

If everyone maxes all their oil reserves, the planet is screwed within 2 generations.

It’s essentially anti-science ‘zealotry’ not to recognise this. 

We then have a massive, high stakes version of prisoner’s dilemma. To stop the Middle East, the Sahel, North Africa, Southern Europe, and big parts of SE Asia becoming uninhabitable, oil consumption needs to be drastically reduced.

If everyone just says “you can leave your reserves in the ground, but I’m maxing out mine”, we’re screwed; billions of people die or are displaced, with vast numbers of refugees from all the failed states.

That’s the easy bit to describe. The hard bit is what you actually do about it. There are no clear right answers, but there are obvious wrong answers.

Expecting others to do something when we won’t is almost nihilistically hopeless. But that is apparently the new UK strategy. It has immediately alienated the US and Europe and gets us next to nothing in return (the energy security benefits are negligible and you’d get a bigger economic benefit by investing in renewables and energy efficiency now), and it further reduces the chances of anything meaningful getting done at an international level. That’s what I find so depressing about this.

Terry, according to most on here, the eu and us pay no attention to us, so what does it matter. Norway and Sweden are both givng out new drilling licences; we can impoverish ourselves while others laugh and take advantage, or make reasonable changes that work for the poorest in the uk

Terry and his ilk need a reality check.

Why are they happy to rely upon the petro/LPG despots across the world for us to remain a first world country? 

After the wake up call of Ukraine, if you have the option to develop a resilience in energy policy, you goddam take it.
 

 

After the wake up call of Ukraine, if you have the option to develop a resilience in energy policy, you goddam take it.

EXACTLY!!

THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD REMAIN A NET IMPORTER OF FOSSIL FUELS RATHER THAN INVEST IN RENEWABLES AND NUCLEAR TAKE THAT LIBS: TIME YOU STARTED LIVING IN THE GODDAMN FREE WORLD GODDAMNIT!!

So the answer is just to accept destruction, then, and not even try to do something about it?

@MH - We won’t need to rely on despots or drill for new oil in order to secure future energy supply. New O&G won’t come online for decades. It has nothing to do with energy security in the short to medium term, and renewables are already cheaper than new oil + you don’t have decommissioning costs. You can upgrade a lot of insulation, build a lot of renewable infrastructure and energy storage in 20 years to give long term energy security, boosting your economy in the meantime.

Even if you ignore the scientific consensus on climate change, investment in renewable infrastructure would be worth doing anyway.

Or you could continue to give subsidies to O&G and have virtually nothing to show for it once the companies have taken their profits and left the state with the clean up costs, ignoring carbon generated.

There’s plenty of renewable energy at night.

Re the economics, that well-known hard left, anticapitalist cabal the IMF calculated that fossil fuel subsidies were worth $5.9 trillion in 2020: https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies#:~:text=G…)%20continues%20to%20climb.

The includes implicit and indirect subsidies, but even the direct subsidies were worth over $0.5 trillion.

If you just re-directed the subsidies you could solve the climate change issue.

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