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Thank you, Muckle.
I agree with you about free speech but I have long thought this an excellent BB for exchanging information, insights and opinions. I have seen many other BB's descend into what are little more than online insult exchanges and I want to avoid that as far as possible.
Hence I wanted to avoid this situation blowing up into what could be a distraction from the greater purpose of the BB.
But thank you for the comment.
Sefton,........ if some folk find your post offensive then that's fair enough, but we in this country have the privilege of free speech and if you were to delete your post that for me would go against the democracy of this country, so please do not delete.
Evening Mikha,
It is not, and was not, my intention to cause offence. All I was trying to do was point some issues around single point of failure and the risks there.
But, if it has has caused offence, I apologise and am perfectly happy to withdraw it (I am still trying to work out how to actually delete a post).
What I do care about is
Ireland's politicans might take care to have a look at their own history and see what happens when you get exposed to a single point of failure (in the current case, energy supply).
Last time they made that mistake was when the whole country in the early/mid19th century made itself almost entirely dependent on potatoes, as a food source and an income source (so, effectively, it was risk factors squared). And then the potato blight hit - and wiped out a significant part of the population and send many others emigrating to the US.
This is offensive Sefton, to me as an Irish person and I'm sure many other investors reading this board, it all well and good giving us your extended politically commentaries but you have changed history to fit your narrative....which unfortunately this time is offensive, a remedy would be delete your post please
I was referring to the power failure earlier this year in Texas, USA.
Hi MK,
Thanks.
Money usually concentrates the mind, even of politicians.
The losses to the insurance companies and re-insurance companies of the power failure earlier this year because of the power failure caused by the renewables (primarily wind turbines which froze solid in unexpectedly bad weather) were through the ceiling - many billions of Dollars. Primarily because of Business Interruption Risk (BIU) and the associated consequential damages claims (loss of profit) from businesses, big and small.
Those losses are still being quantified but, it looks like they could significantly exceed even the worst payouts on Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
So, insurers are getting much wore wise to these huge risks of single event catastrophe (such as the Potato Famine would have been) and the re-insurers are getting ever more reluctant to take on the risks.
That would pose huge issues for Ireland, especially if there were a major power crisis (the insurers and re-insurers would probably invoke force majeure or Act of God escape clauses). The big data centre operators know that and have become extremely sensitive to it(because it has a huge effect on the financing structures of these big data centres) - it is the reason that many of them having been moving out of the Communist state of California, where the stability of energy supply is hugely unstable.
At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, economic sanity will descend even on Irish politicians, and they will realise that they have to move fast and pre-emptively to fix this energy risk exposure. Because the cost of fixing it under extremis when the disaster has happened is GINORMOUS. Ask the Governor of Texas...
Go my point around single points of failure, it should be noted that in terms of supply of oil and indeed other goods, there are currently two major points in vulnerability - the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.
Those are the two best known but there are others. Most specifically the exit at the western end of the Mediterranean - which is why Gibraltar has always been so militarily and geo-strategically important to Great Britain - and then Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, where the Chinese have built a massive naval port which would enable them to block access to the Suez Canal by just controlling the Gulf of Aden (which most the Middle East Oil comes through en route to Egypt).
There is also the Bosphorus, controlled by Turkey, and which controls access to the Black Sea and thus non-pied Russian oil and gas.
Ireland as a small country which is not especially geo-politically important to anyone should be especially sensitive to its exposure to energy vulnerability, given the potential for it to get relatively easily isolated (it has very limited own energy production capacity).
Obviously, I want any advance in the Ireland energy debate to be to the benefit of PRD but, whatever, as a country, they need to really start realising just how serious the situation could be.
Nicodemus made the point earlier that much of the UK's LNG comes from Qatar and Russia. Both are seriously unstable and, in the case of Qatar, the currently very dangerous situation in the Middle East caused by Biden's disastrous foreign policy, is only likely to make the situation worse (Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been in a low-level war for some years, mainly by proxy, but that could escalate).
Ireland's energy vulnerability is very real, given these geo-political challenges.
And, though politicians seldom lose any opportunity to disappoint, the Irish politicians (a venal and feral crowd at the best of times) should realise that there is an imminent and real threat to their country's energy security.
Ireland was under British rule at the time of the famine and the causes of their reliance on one food doesn't cover those responsible with glory .
However the point you make is clear Sefton.
Ireland's politicans might take care to have a look at their own history and see what happens when you get exposed to a single point of failure (in the current case, energy supply).
Last time they made that mistake was when the whole country in the early/mid19th century made itself almost entirely dependent on potatoes, as a food source and an income source (so, effectively, it was risk factors squared). And then the potato blight hit - and wiped out a significant part of the population and send many others emigrating to the US.
Being totally exposed to a single point of failure (as the US just experienced with the cyber-hacking of the Colonial oil pipeline) is NEVER a good idea.
Modern Ireland is strongly dependent on the data centre industry, which is massively energy-intensive, yet they seem oblivious to the risk of energy failure in their country.
They would do well to remember the potato blight and start sorting the situation out before there is a catastrophic event - which can well happen we one does not have redundancy of energy supplier (put simply, multiple options in that event that one of more fail).
As geo-political uncertainty spreads across the globe much more rapidly than probably anytime since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, politicians in any country are going to have to realise that their countries can be facing existential threats and that dealing with those (and mitigating risk) is much more important than appeasing left-wing/climate change warriors who probably need a decent shower more than anything else.
Hi all,
I came across this,
National Preventive Action Plan
Gas 2018 – 2022 Ireland
Compiled by the CRU, in which it states has to be every four years which would fit the current timeline on security of supply.
The world has moved on since this was published with the closure of the Kinsale gas field and the gas storage facility to go with it, Moneypoint power station in change of use, Corrib gas field in decline, reduced supply from the North Sea gas fields, an increase of gas usage and an ever reliant demand on the Moffat interconnectors which also supply’s N.I. And the Isle of Man gas, could look to some as a pretty precarious situation considering when this report was released nearly four years ago the conclusion I made was one of “running on borrowed time”
Ireland has made improvements in its renewables but will it be enough to satisfy a good outcome in the forthcoming report.
It contains 64 pages and I would recommend reading.
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/npap_ireland_2018_.pdf
AIMHO of course.
GLA
Wacky.
Wrt timeframes the Platts article states that there won't be any decisions made until the energy review is completed. It seems that CEPA were awarded the contract only last week 10/5/2021. The tender conditions stipulates an initial draft report must be made at various intervals, the first one being 6 months after the review starts. The final full review to be completed in 12 months. I'm not sure when or even if CEPA have officially started yet.
Initially I found this timeframe disappointing however as GRH and others have higlighted, there is some urgency required here. I believe all decisions will have been long made by then and the review is just a dotting the i's .
exercise.
All imho
T & T is the UK's fifth biggest LNG supplier after Qatar, Russia, US and Algeria so infrastructure for trans Atlantic supply is already in place . I'm presuming operation Rainbow is still going full steam ahead despite the decision in Ireland make no decision about LNG importation for the time being.
Surely, if they persist in seeing no sense, we can move our FSRU up and around the coast to sell to Northern Ireland, who can then sell it to the South. (Along with the fracked LNG from the US that we import)
Hi MK111
Thanks for highlighting CEPA, just a quick look at their website would suggest this company has been involved with more than just the security of supply issue, which in my reckoning is a follow on to the previous work they have recently completed.
For example.
Advising the Commission for Regulation of Utilities in Ireland on the economics of interconnection and the benefits of future physical interconnection in an environment of high levels of variable generation.
Conducting a study into the impacts of applying equal transmission charging treatment with storage for bidirectional interconnection points for a gas interconnector. (Not equal at the moment 90/10 ratio in favour of the U.K.)
Developing an impact assessment of a proposed new combined cycle gas turbine. (Carbon Capture)
https://www.cepa.co.uk/sectors/energy
AIMHO of course.
GLA
Wacky
https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/177146/0/0?returnUrl=&b=ETENDERS_SIMPLE
I have only very briefly looked over this but there are some timeframes mentioned here from when the review starts. It looks like acompany called CEPA Ltd in London were awarded the contract. Not sure when they started. Hopefully someone more skilled than I am can delve into it.
Does anyone know when the energy review report is expected to be released? I couldn’t find an ETA.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/051421-ireland-advises-against-all-lng-project-developments-during-energy-review
This is only sensible, but fingers crossed the review has the right conclusions.