Sunday
Jul082012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Mission impoverish
Jul 8, 2012 Economics Energy: gas Christopher Booker laments the insanity of the UK government's policy on shale gas, with the headline summing things up rather well
You can’t have shale gas – it might halve your bills
It is an extraordinary thing when the main political parties agree that the way ahead is a the impoverishment of the electorate and transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich.
Reader Comments (183)
Mike, your ability to misconstrue what is said is quite remarkable. If it is intentional, I'd say you have a wasted talent, best applied to politics. But, if it really is intentional, I wonder why you would do it. Politicians do it because they think that their audience is tribal enough or dumb enough not to care/notice. Do you have similar feelings about the BH audience? Anyway, it makes you a poor interlocutor.
Dung, why do you claim the Elswick field to be shale gas? It is "low permeability sandstone", as a quick search reveals: http://www.warwickenergy.com/oandg/OAGelswick.htm
And if drilling occurs only once and output drops off as rapidly as is suggested, then where does all the gas come from to transform the market?
I find it odd that we should restrict these companies who have financial backing for extracting shale gas on the basis that some on hear do not think they can make a profit.
Their shareholders obviously do.
Bucket
From the Cuadrilla website:
Did you guess or imagine that Elswick was not fracked?
Bucket
Hard as it is I have to admit that technically sandstone is not shale although I am not sure what difference that makes to your argument.
As with shale, the only way to extract gas is by fracking.
Dung, I didn't say it was not fracked, I said it was not shale. I don't know the difference in characteristics of shale vs sandstone wells, except that what I have read indicates that shale production rates drop off quickly.
OT perhaps: one practical difference is that instead of a nice, neat, single, well at Elswick with a generator and an underground electricity cable, Cuadrilla apparently want up to 400 wells and might want pipes connecting them together. And perhaps pipes to the gas grid or a generating station. Might be rather more noticeable.
I suspect the agitation over 400 wells is misplaced. From what I have read, the current technique is to drill 10 - 12 wells radially from one well pad, each going out up to 5 km laterally. The finished wellpads comprise portacabin-sized structures, each 10 km+ from the next. Pipes are run underground.
That is hardly obtrusive: farm buildings, substations, etc are probably more noticeable.
Compare it with windmill which cause more gas to be imported than would be the case without the windmills.
When James Smith retired as Chairman of Shell he said in effect that there are 200+ years of Shale Gas beneath us and therein lies our future.
On Saturday in the Telegraph for Shell's final Age of Energy feature, the new Chairman Graham van't Hoff said this -
'Developing ways to capture and store the carbon dioxide that comes from burning them (fossil fuels) is ESSENTIAL. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is currently the only technology available to mitigate emissions from large scale fossil fuel use'.
SHELL know that CCS cannot possibly work, they haven't even managed to build a demonstration plant yet, so why would an OIL company seek to ensure that its own future was proscribed ?
The only possible explanation is that SHELL are so committed to Carbon Trading which in total is worth $178 Billion a year, that they cannot afford to see the market collapse.
As the Americans have shown that by switching to Shale Gas they are actually reducing their 'Carbon Footprint' (God, how I hate that ridiculous expression) SHELL know that the same would happen here, thus ensuring the total collapse of the 'carbon' market.
Ecclesiastical Uncle
Firstly - the detail [of the treaty], as with any contract, is everything. Secondly, NO, Parliament cannot refuse to implement EU directives. Not least because "we" are the "EU" - it is not a separate entity. "Our" signatures are on every treaty and directive. Which takes us quickly to "democracy" ...
In much the same way that we can change our bank or energy supplier. I believe the term, these days, is "customer churn".
You really have to fall into despair at the"LieBor scandal". Here we have our banks rigging, for pretty much a decade (at least), with the collusion of your (voters’ mercy) "reps", a $500 Trillion market. Want to guess how many will go to jail? Barclays fined £400m? Well 400x10^6 / 500 x10^12 (x 100) = when do I get to rig the market?
Where are your ( voters’ mercy) representatives, your hanging Judge, your ever tenacious free press? Document shredding down at Barclays central with the rest of the thieves I'll wager.
3x2
Life as we know it seems to boil down to a gravy train. In order to gain entry to this train you must swear to give up honesty, integrity and pretty much every other desirable trait. All our politicians appear to have boarded this train and are not looking out of the windows.
The problem with "jumping the train" is that when it all goes pear shaped "the people" tend to invest in WD40 and (axe/guillotine) blades. A few (relative) years of inter shouldn't preclude a glacial.
Because socialism and social liberalism ideology have difficulties in competing for power in todays democratic and free Western World they have to change The Western World.
Like in North Korea where 100 % conformity to the providers of ideology and food is the only mean of survival.
In order to revitalize the leftist ideology and power they have to take our money, property( make us poor again) freedom and democracy
In (almost) the words of the old play:
No Fracking Please, We're British.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
I am submitting a further rant to the unthreaded page because, as toad has noted, fracking is becoming buried in disconnected issues.
Tim Yeo.
Tim "Nice but Dim" would seem to be closer to the mark.
Until you realise the number of his fingers and pies.
@Bit Bucket
"I don't know the difference in characteristics of shale vs sandstone wells, except that what I have read indicates that shale production rates drop off quickly."
Depends where you read it.
The funny thing is that they do not appear to be having all these expensive technical problems you allude to in the US, where gas prices have halved.
Maybe, just maybe, you are misinformed?
WHAT'S GOING ON AT THE TOP ?
We have a PM whose wife's father trousers £1000 a day off us for his 'windfarm'.
His deputy's Spanish wife trousers £500,000 a year as a director of a Spanish wind & solar company.
No wonder they are happier listening to SHELL'S Carbon Trader, David Hone, than Lord Browne of Madingley former chairman of BP, now with Cuadrilla, who was deliberately excluded from the meeting at N0 10 on the future for Shale gas, despite the fact that he's a former adviser to Cameron.
Taking it a nasty stage further, the Sunday Times hosted a whispering campaign against Browne with an article by 'Danny Fortson' entitled 'Shale Gas Revolution On Hold Amid Safety Fears'.
The Shale gas boom is exploding in America, but the vested interests of SHELL'S Carbon Traders supported by advocacy groups like WWF, Greenpeace and George Monbiot's and Caroline Lucas's CACC lot is seeking to ensure that it won't take off here.
With Nick too busy with 'Lords Reform' and Dave in thrall to his admitted Greenpeace activist wife, what hope is there ?
> Pot and kettle come to mind. However, I will concede that Nial's comment
> might just be open to the interpretation you put on it. Though I think you've
> misunderstood.
OK, so it was a quick post off the top of my head trying to summarise Doug Proctor's main points.
As AC1 says...
"I find it odd that we should restrict these companies who have financial backing for extracting shale gas on the basis that some on hear do not think they can make a profit.
Their shareholders obviously do."
Bitbucket, would you not prefer the money that is currently spent importing gas from abroad to be spent producing it in the UK?
Even if it's not a game changer, if it keeps prices deflated for a few years, it's a good thing IMHO.
Nial
Shale in the UK IS a game changer but only if the government gives the go ahead. The government is currently sitting on it using every excuse they can find. Hopefully the pressure will build up and they will suffer excruciating pain in the nether regions.
The governments own estimates are that there are at least 1000 trillion cubic feet of shale gas offshore. Cuadrilla claim to have at least 200 trillion cubic feet in their Bowland basin shale play but they dont have ALL the Bowland basin.
You need to understand just how huge this shale deposit is. It is 3000 feet thick, that is thicker than all the major US shale deposits put together! The gas recoverable per square mile is massively greater in the Bowland play than any US shale play. This is a truly world class resource.
Don Keiller, take a look at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8914
Nial, yes better to keep the money in the UK, for sure. But on condition that the operator is fully insured (a small company that screws the environment cannot afford to pay compensation) and that the local people affected agree to the drilling and are properly compensated for the disturbance etc. Better still would be to cut national consumption as well.
The alternative is windmills and more gas imports.
Also the windmills disrupt the internal organs of some people by infrasound and the flicker drives others mad.
In Germany the mandatory distance away from homes is 2 km.
@Bitbucket nice activist website. Peak Oil Doomsters.
and
"But on condition that the operator is fully insured (a small company that screws the environment cannot afford to pay compensation) and that the local people affected agree to the drilling and are properly compensated for the disturbance etc."
You mean just like the insurance/compensation paid out by Big Birdshredder PLC for the blight and disturbance their activities cause?
BitBucket
And off the Durham/Northumberland coast there is (according to mining engineers who have worked in the area) three times as much coal as was taken out in the last century, all of which could be reclaimed by gasification if you're worried about CO2 levels (which, as I pointed out earlier, I am not).
So I repeat the question: what's not to like? Or to be more exact what is there about gas extraction (shale or coal) that you don't like?
[I was going on to ask what is so special about shale gas extraction that it needs more regulation than wind-driven power stations but I see Don Keiller has got there first!)
Don, to be fair, the wind farms should also be required to insure themselves. But as they are not going to poison any aquifers, the potential costs (and hence the cost of insurance) should be trivial compared to those for the drillers. Compensate the local communities - yes, why not? The principle should be the same. Halving local residents' council tax or electricity bills would go a long way to persuading them to put up with wind farms.
On birds, the evidence seems mixed. There are worries that raptors are in particular danger, but then there are those here who subscribe to the idea that the earth is for mankind to reap as it will - the 'selfishness doctrine' of you like. It must be difficult to juggle sympathy for birds with such a view.
BitBucket
Developers of wind-driven power stations already bribe local communities (with taxpayers' money) to accept their inefficient power generators. How can they possibly provide them with half-price electricity?
Can you provide a reliable source for your claim that fracking poisons aquifers, please?
@Bit Bucket.
Remind me of the depth of a typical shale gas deposit compared with an aquifer?
You've been watching too much "Gasland". It's addled your brain.
Don, do the relative depths matter? If the aquifer is above the shale, the driller must penetrate it and then use various casings that prevent seepage into the aquifer. The casings fail in a significant proportion of wells, but if the driller can persuade an insurer that the risk of problems with aquifers is low, then insurance will cost little. The insurer just has to be sure it can, in the worst case, pay for the cost of replacing the aquifer as a water source for the foreseeable future (however long it takes to clear). So there is no problem, is there?
BitBucket
Do you have any figures for the number of households within the range of fracking activities that draw their water directly from aquifers?
Do you have any figure for the level of fracking chemicals as a percentage of the total fracking substances (water, sand, etc)?
Do you have any reliable — I stress again, reliable — sources providing evidence that fracking chemicals have ever appeared in unacceptable quantities in aquifers as a result of fracking?
I think Bitbucket should understand that methane in deep well water is more often the case than otherwise, You treat it as standard by spraying the water in air. Whenever you see that, then you know the water has significant methane in it.
Bucket
Shale is impermeable and so as you say the only leakage would be due to the well casing. As I pointed out to you yesterday (or the day before) Cuadrilla have had a fracked well operating at Elswick near Blackpool since 1993 and they have had no polution problems.
You rightly pointed out that Elswick is actually a sandstone frack and of course sandstone is permiable and yet still there has been no leakage. Does that give you a nice warm reassuring feeling?
It is never possible to eliminate risk, however small. But if a well has a failure of casing integrity the operator must urgently rectify it, cost no object, and there are numerous ways to do so- plugs and squeeze jobs, liners, if all else fails cementing the whole lot up, via with a relief well if necessary. It is an industry obligation and code of honour.
BitBucket- just curious, I've heard of a junk basket, often run just behind the drillbit to catch broken teeth and other debris- but what's a bit bucket?
If as everyone says, pollution of aquifers is so unlikely, insurance against the event and consequences will be cheap; requiring the driller to have such insurance will be no impediment to drilling. So what is the problem? Why get upset?
Pharos: It's the digital waste-bin. To ensure a plentiful supply of random numbers, one should keep one's BitBucket full by regularly tossing old documents into /dev/null.
Jul 10, 2012 at 10:40 PM | BitBucket
If I were you /dev/null I would lay off water altogether. You'd be amazed at what you are drinking whatever its source:
http://www.nucfilm.com/gainon_final.pdf
http://www.mineralwaters.org/papers/UranRadioactivity.pdf
Perhaps you could persuade Gaia to take out some insurance.
@Bitbucket.
You miss the point- as usual.
It is not most of us on this blog who are upset about fracking, rather it is you who appear to have a pathological hatred of shale gas and are therefore upset about fracking.
It is your unlikely "what if" scenarios that the majority here find upsetting, as we know your Watermelon mates will be dripping them, unopposed, into ignorant politicians' ears, thereby condemning a significant proportion of UK citizens to fuel poverty and hypothermia.
Don, you misrepresent me, but I dare say there are many on 'my side' who do fit your caricature. I'd consider shale gas a plus if it can be extracted safely, cleanly and with those who stand to profit from its extraction bearing all costs, externalities and risks. If it offsets the use of coal, I would see that as a good thing.
However, I don't buy the idea that it will lower prices significantly in the long term. For that, there has to be excess supply, as in the US now. UK production would be likely to come on line more slowly than in the US and with new demand from gas turbines replacing coal-fired plant, prices could even rise.
My preference would still be for a big push for energy efficiency and demand management.
I assume you would also agree then that the manufacturers of wind-driven power stations should also bear "all costs, externalities and risks", including decommissioning costs.
Energy efficiency is a nice thought but I would suggest that in practical terms it has gone about as far as it can go certainly in domestic terms. I've said before that if I had turned my CH thermostat down by 1 degree every time the government launched yet another of its energy efficiency drives I would have died of hypothermia years ago.
As for that lovely weasel phrase "demand management". What you mean is smart meters that can turn off your supply when "they" choose. I shall believe that there is a future in that sort of control when public buildings turn their central heating systems down to no more than 20C (18C would be better) and at least three-quarters of public lighting (streets, highways, office blocks, advertising, shops) had their lighting switched off automatically at midnight, Sunday to Thursday.
The volume of shale gas is not such that it will necessarily have the same effect on prices as it has in the US but it puts the UK in the position where it can set its own energy prices and cease to be dependant on the vagaries of the Russians and the Middle East.
It's called "energy security" and much as the eco-activists don't like it (without ever fully explaining why) it is far and away the best hope the UK has for lasting prosperity.
(Perhaps that's why the eco-activists don't like it. Prosperity for the masses? I mean ... whatever next?)
Bitbucket: you and your acquaintances need a good lesson from pragmatic engineers. The windmills save no CIO2. To do that we need massive pump storage; flooding the Lake District and much of Scotland. The cost will be immense and the CO2 investment in concrete will take a century or more to be returned because even with 15% of electricity from the windmills, we'll save just 2-3% of the CO2.
Besides halving electricity use, the present plan, and with it the deaths of many millions of the vulnerable in the frigid Little Ice Age winters to come, the only way dramatically to reduce CO2 is to decentralise power generation to fuel cells in homes and cars. However, the carbon traders want an oligopoly so they control home heating from electricity and have battery cars.
You have to decide whether you want to support top-down politics and bankers desperate to replace the mortgage scams, or save CO2. Which is it to be?
Mr Jackson,
In a sane world DECC would actually be called The Department of Energy Security and it's main objective would be, as it's name says, energy security.
To me this should be one of this governments over riding priorities. Sadly the reality is that the priorities of this Government are set by Brussels and they are firmly in the grip of Mann Made Global Warming (tm) mentalism.
Regards
Mailman
Yes, of course any producer should bear all costs, externalities and risks of their activities. That should be a basic principle of a fair system. Sadly that often breaks down in the face of practicality (eg how to measure) or political factors. Wind farm subsidies fall foul of this principle. How can I justify them? I cannot. The consistent approach (i.e. consistent with the principle above), if one considers CO2 to be an externality that should be paid for by the producer (which I do), is a carbon tax.
Maybe in affluent domestic situations, the low-hanging fruit of efficiency savings has been picked. But in many poor homes, and in many offices and industrial buildings, much can be done easily. And as you say, public buildings should lead the way - why on earth don't they? Look at the recent renovation of the empire state building where 20% energy savings have been made; such savings are thought possible throughout the commercial sector.
Demand management is not new - for example the National Grid Frequency Response. Imagine augmenting it so that public lighting is fitted with frequency response controls that can reduce the light output according to strain on the grid (see http://www.dynamicdemand.co.uk/grid.htm for current grid frequency). Or air conditioners, space/water heaters, battery chargers, refrigerators etc that moderate their power use depending upon grid frequency. Fitting that sort of technology has to be a lot cheaper than replacing ageing generating plant.
BitBucket
"Fitting that sort of technology has to be a lot cheaper than replacing ageing generating plant."
Now that's a far reaching statement that demands some numbers. It's all well and good to have Walter Mitty type dreams but your belief system needs to be explained to us all. My scepticism is spiked by this statement.
We do not need to worry about energy savings at the moment.
The world has fossil fuel coming out of its ears and has Thorium to come.
There is no need for energy saving dark bulbs or dumb meters. Our energy resource time scales are such that the natural progression of increased performance and increased efficiency will happen without dictats.
We're not in agreement on this, except insofar as energy efficiency is always a good idea and wasting energy is not a good use of resources.
But we are not short of coal or gas or uranium or (if we get the technology functioning) thorium. There is no need to conserve energy — use it sensibly, yes; avoid wasting it; yes, but what are we "conserving" it for?
We have been bamboozled by the Ehrlichs and the Wirths and the Lovelocks and the Monbiots essentially into not using our raw materials (not just energy producing raw materials but others as well) because we need to "conserve them for future generations." And when it comes to the crunch it is evident that the real answer to the question 'why?' is "so that future generations can not use them as well".
You must have heard the story of the man who asked for an A4 notepad from the stationery cupboard only to be told he couldn't have it because it was the last one and "what if someone else came and asked for one and I didn't have any?" It's basically the same argument and it's a fatuous one.
I've made the point before (ad nauseam): the worst thing we can do — with raw materials, with 'climate change', with you-name-it — is to try to second-guess our grandchildren and solve their problems for them now. And the more we impoverish ourselves (which is to an extent what you are asking us to do) the greater chance that we impoverish them as well and deprive them of the means to solve their problems.
I don't think they would thank us for that, do you?
I think the human race is special but I dont think that sustainability and CAGW freaks agree with me.
The human race is literally on a knife edge and it has nothing to do with running out of resources. Naturally occurring events can happen without warning at any time and we are currently powerless to prevent them or escape them.
A return to full ice age for 100,000 years would decimate us initially but an asteroid strike or a super volcano could wipe us out completely. The only way for our race to survive is to fully and quickly develop our economies and our technology so as to be able to prevent the second two and maybe adapt to the first. It would also allow the only real solution which is for humans to settle on other planets.
Living in harmony with nature is not going to cut it.
Dung
For the avoidance of doubt ... my 7.42pm posting was a reply to BitBucket. In case you thought it was aimed at you!
Mike
No sir I did not think it was aimed at me but thank you for thinking to clarify.
Or air conditioners, space/water heaters, battery chargers, refrigerators etc that moderate their power use depending upon grid frequency. Fitting that sort of technology has to be a lot cheaper than replacing ageing generating plant.
When I am too hot, and I might consider an air conditioner an option, then I want it now. Not when electricity is cheaper (in the middle of the night). I'm also keen on my refrigerator keeping my food cool all the time, not just when it suits the power companies.
At very best using things like a battery charger in the middle of the night does not actually save power. All it does is smooth the usage a bit. Big deal! If we all get to a third world situation where power is intermittent then I'm sure we will learn to deal with it by ourselves, without having to be lectured on it.
"Demand management" at best is code for going without when it is convenient. At worst it just means going without.
BitBucket:
David Porter:
Quite right. I made that up, but it sounded likely. Let's see...
Let's say we make an adaptor that responds to grid frequency and drops its load for a while when the grid is under strain. Make 10 million of them at say £10 each and have them attached to uncritical, moderate loads - immersion heaters, space heaters, battery chargers etc. If at any time a conservative 1% of devices are able to drop 3KW of load on detecting strain on the grid, we have 300MW of demand management for £100 million and it costs nothing to run. In comparison, we could build a 300MW gas-fired plant for about the same money (?) and we then have to maintain the plant and feed it gas to get any power.
Although we are not comparing like with like, a lot of generating capacity is there just in case demand increases (70GW installed capacity vs 40GW typical usage) - and at the margin, dropping demand is equivalent to adding supply.
My example imagines a relatively expensive retro-fit adaptor. But say we build such demand management into any new device that can conceptually defer, drop or reduce its load and the cost per device would be pennies, not pounds. The demand management capacity would be many times greater.
I'd say my assertion is realistic. And like all efficiency improvements, demand management is a gift that keeps giving. A gas turbine in contrast is a beast that must be fed and watered. Note that such frequency response management is primitive. If the real-time price of electricity is available to devices they can make even better choices as to when to turn on/off.
Bitbucket; do you know the available variation of mains frequency? It's +/- 0.2 Hz. Here is a meter so you can check it: http://www.dynamicdemand.co.uk/grid.htm
Do you really know more than power engineers? In Germany, the grid is near failure and if it does fail, much of Europe fails as well - no trains, refrigeration, no shops to buy food. You can't muck about with grids. The most likely cause of failure is solar.. It's far too large and stupidly, it all switches out at 50.2 Hz. So, the cause of the Great Grid Failure will be when a cloud suddenly leaves the face out the sun.
They are desperately retrofitting their solar installations with soft start/stop units so the central generators can control the low voltage grid. Even so, the Germans are expecting to have to deal with major power cuts. Thus the aluminium smelter companies are closing down to offshore because once they freeze, they're dead. Other manufacturers are planning to go to China.
The response of the Germans is to retrofit Norwegian hydro with pump storage at enormous expense. However, RWE and E.On haven't access to the capital so can't pay for it. The new environment minister decided to install more solar energy under pressure from his home city which is a major manufacturing centre. He is being leant on to stop this stupidity.
In 5 years Germany will be an economic basket case because of their stupid Greens imposing impossible demands on their grid.
Last year the NGC Chairman warned that by 2020 consumers would not get a regular grid supply so would have to install their own generation. My response has been to suggest we develop decentralised generation, 10 million domestic fuel cells at 1 kW [E]. Allied to cheaper solar they could in the day provide windmill standby.
The problem is, this would break the oligopolistic control of grid electricity prices and by reducing methane consumption by at least 30%, it would kill off the business plans of corporations like Shell which have shifted to carbon trading. So, the big problem for the Greens is do they go for real CO2 saving or profits for the corporations that sponsor them?