Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Energy bills will be unaffordable without system overhaul, says regulator
Jill Treanor, The Guardian
Energy regulator Ofgem today warned Britons may not be able to afford to heat their homes in the years ahead unless there is radical overhaul of the country’s energy supplies.
The regulator warned the country’s current system may not be sufficient to ensure “secure and sustainable” power across the country beyond 2015.
In announcing proposals for a radical range of options (pdf), including setting up central buying of power, Ofgem’s chief executive, Alistair Buchanan, admitted that maintaining the current free-market approach was no longer an option.
Energy bills could rise between 14% and 25% by 2020 as the industry pays for the £200bn cost of investment needed to overhaul of the current system. He warned that increasing number of consumers would be unable to afford the cost of heating their homes.
…The regulator set out five key issues:
-A need for unprecedented levels of investment over many years in difficult financial conditions and against a background of increased risk and uncertainty.
-The uncertainty in future carbon prices is likely to delay or deter investment in low carbon technology and lead to greater decarbonisation costs in the future.
-Short-term price signals at times of system stress do not fully reflect the value that customers place on supply security which may mean that the incentives to make additional peak energy supplies available and to invest in peaking capacity are not strong enough.
-Interdependence with international markets exposes Britain to a range of additional risks that may undermine the country’s security of supply.
-The higher cost of gas and electricity may mean that increasing numbers of consumers are not able to afford adequate levels of energy to meet their requirements and that the competitiveness of industry and business is affected.
(3 Feb 2010)
EB reader “Slightly” comments:
“Regulators five key issues read like a post Peak Oil scenario.”
The Project Discovery report can be accessed here -KS
Is the world awash in oil?
David Olive, The Star
Latest finds make it seem that way, but it would be unwise not to expand alternative energy development
There is a growing consensus among world oil experts that the planet has an abundance of oil – “enough oil for at least 100 years,” claims a top executive at Italian oil giant ENI SpA. Enough to fuel the industrial revolutions in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world. Enough to supply North America after it recovers from a recession in which oil consumption dropped 9 per cent.
The thesis is based on an unusually large number of recent major discoveries and on enhanced recovery techniques that have breathed new life into oilfields once thought to be tapped out.
While there’s still an argument about oil’s long-term future, there’s no denying the evidence of newly abundant oil.
… There are problems with this abundant-oil scenario. Obviously, there is no getting around the role of oil and other fossil fuels in global warming, and the devastating impact that unchecked climate change will have on our species.
Much of this new abundant oil is to be found in the world’s most dangerous neighbourhoods – Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Colombia and Syria, among others. Some are terrorist breeding grounds. Some are kleptocracies. Most are politically unstable.
Venezuela and Russia are given to expropriation. The Alberta tar sands are an ecological disaster. By now, the Pentagon, CIA and U.S. State Department each regard dependence on imported oil as a national security risk.
Then there’s the spectacular cost of exploiting “new” oil. Chevron Corp. spent a decade and $2.7 billion (U.S.) to bring into production a Gulf of Mexico play that yields a modest 125,000 barrels a day. The 250,000 barrels a day produced by the Gulf’s biggest rig, BP’s Thunder Horse, accounts for just 0.3 per cent of world consumption.
The technology is mind-boggling, from the satellites now used to keep immense drilling platforms from drifting, to the supercomputers required to bring more precision to seismic delineation.
(31 January 2010)
Demand for oil will peak by 2030 – BP chief
Alastair Dalton, The Scotsman
GLOBAL demand for oil will peak within the next two decades, the chief executive of Europe’s largest oil company has said.
Tony Hayward of BP said the plateau would be reached between 2020 and 2030 as falling demand from developed countries balanced growing demand from developing nations.
BP said it was the first time Mr Hayward had put a date on peak demand, following a range of predictions from other bodies.
His comments also suggest Mr Hayward now thinks the peak will come earlier than he had previously thought.
… BP’s prediction for demand peaking comes months after Deutsche Bank forecast it would peak in six years’ time.
(3 February 2010)
