Energy Insecurity: The State of Play

August 15th, 2008

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Recent events in the Caucasus have reminded us all of the rising stakes surrounding the global supply of cheap(-ish) fossil energy, and the prospect of future wars small and large as the religion of increasing GDP starts to demand more and more blood sacrifices.

I’ve just come back from a two-week tour of South Wales and Gloucestershire conducting a series of interviews with various members of a network of tenacious and inspiring men and women who have waged a many-fronted campaign against the Milford Haven LNG terminals and South Wales gas pipeline. It’s interesting that the sole serious rationale behind the pipeline was to maintain security of energy supplies, or “keeping the lights on” for anyone out there who prefers being peppered by random gobbets of stupidity over intelligible uses of English.

The pipeline was therefore envisaged as a grand blow for Britain’s energy freedom, which would at one stroke take our destiny out of the hands of those nefarious Russkies, who were just itching to close the valves to stop gas flowing into Europe again this winter.

Of course, what happened was that there isn’t actually any gas to go into the terminals (even if the pipeline and terminals were working, which of course they still aren’t). The problem, as emerged earlier this year, is the spot price of gas, which ensures that whoever can pay the most will get the fuel. And as the Dutch and Japanese, among others are quite happy to pay more than we are, those LNG tankers from Qatar will just keep on sailing, thanks very much, right past the UK. So, thanks to the impending plans for lots of big gas power stations, in essence, we’ve swapped dependence on the geopolitical whims of the Russians for being locked in on a path of infrastructure development which will see us largely dependent on the insane whims of the global gas market for the next couple of decades.
Still, National Grid’s gilded position as the Government’s number one adviser on energy matters looks no less secure, even if the results of its forecasts have been that the rest of us are substantially more shafted than we were three years ago.

Meanwhile, in Canada, British Columbia has banned LNG tankers from the Georgia Sound and surrounding waterways, on the grounds that such vessels shouldn’t be jostling for space with smaller craft such as ferries, freighters and pleasure craft in a busy waterway. Apparently though it’s absolutely fine for these vessels to go barging into the dog-leg Cleddau estuary over at Milford, however, home of giant oil terminals and their servicing tankers, various marinas and the embarkation point for the Rosslare ferry.