Energy

The revolution is here at last!  That was the message from John Sauven, Director of Greenpeace, in the Guardian last week.  Following a meeting with the CEO of Dong (Danish oil and natural gas) Energy, Sauven gushed: “This isn’t just a hymn to the glory of an oil and gas …

Nobody doubts that the cost of US fracking has fallen since oil prices collapsed in June 2014.  However, there is considerable disagreement over the causes.  While critics point out that since 2014 wages and service costs have fallen dramatically, the fracking companies have been keen to claim that technological improvements …

Hidden in amongst the Tory ‘power grab’ that is the EU Withdrawal Bill is a clause that allows English ministers to take full control over fracking licenses and decisions in Scotland and Wales.  The change is just one of a raft of clauses that seek to neuter the devolved Scottish …

The UK government looks set to embrace a new fleet of nuclear power plants as the solution to Britain’s growing energy predicament according to Alan Tovey at the Telegraph: “Ministers are ready to approve the swift development of a fleet of ‘mini’ reactors to help guard against electricity shortages, as …

Listeners to the BBC Today programme this morning will have heard the interview with Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), about the company’s plans to introduce several new lines of electric and electric hybrid cars.  In the course of the interview, Speth dropped three bombshells that threaten to …

Oil and Gas UK – the industry trade body – has its annual report out today.  The report seeks to put a gloss on the future of an industry whose stay of execution is only temporary.  According to Oil and Gas UK: “Almost $6 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions …

So-called ‘green energy’ is shaping up to be a wannabee Ponzi scheme reminiscent of the US fracking bubble.  It began with crowd-funded nonsense such as the idea that putting solar panels on the road so that cars and trucks can drive over them might be a good investment.  Since then, …

The supposed silver lining in the large storm cloud that is global ice melt, was that in the absence of the Arctic ice cap, oil companies would be free to drill into virgin seabed. Nowhere was this more so than the Barents Sea above Norway’s North Cape, which was promoted …

Taken alongside the Paris climate targets, the UK government decision to ban new internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) from 2040 implies that almost all of the cars on Britain’s roads will be electric by 2050. Insofar as anyone has focused on the impossibility of achieving this aim, they have tended …

  Nicole Foss famously compared the oil industry to a late night drinking binge.  The early oil found in pressurised deposits just 70 feet beneath the ground was the best booze.  The North Sea was the cheap stuff.  Hydraulically fractured shale oil and tar sands, though, are the last-ditch equivalent …