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Yep, doesn't take a genius to realise that globally we have a) increasing population, b) increasing energy use in developing nations, c) increasing electrification of industry, transport and heating to meet emissions targets in developed nations. All of that means absolutely massive amounts of new power, not just transitioning from existing technologies and production levels to intermittent renewables. Green parties need to show how they realistically plan to meet future energy demand, and not in a way that depends on "silver bullets" like massive grid-scale storage which will likely never arrive.

There should also be serious questions about the cost of any transition versus the benefits accrued. Right now, Ireland has committed to spending $150 billion on saving 0.05% of the world's emissions by 2030. Scaled up it would mean spending $150 trillion globally to curb 50% of emissions. From my own reading those levels of costs a) do not make any sense versus the fairly moderate risks of climate change, b) cannot be achieved without plunging the world into a deep and long-lasting recession, c) probably won't actually achieve their aims and will hit insurmountable bottlenecks with supply of lithium, rare earths and other resources, d) even if implemented would do little to reduce global warming levels by 2100.

Seems to me Germany is leading the way to hell in a coal-powered handcart, and little Ireland is determined to follow the other lemmings off the cliff.

(Quick look at the new project manager's LinkedIn profile suggests that at least Phase 1 is in highly experienced hands).

Q&A video is up.
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/680822286/9f3f017df6
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soundenergyplc/status/1496552813228400640

I had my doubts that this could possibly be the response to the questions submitted, except that the video is titled "Sound Energy February 2022 Q&A". And as I had suspected, Graham (who doesn't even appear in the vid) has used the Phase 1 announcement to squirm out of giving any other information. Bear in mind that the RNS didn't even appear until five days after the Q&A deadline for questions, so I suspect there must have been questions about plenty of other stuff.

Instead what we have is five and a half minutes of the new Tendrara project manager, Kath Mansfield, talking about the schedule for Phase 1. She confirms that it will be of about two years duration, with most of this year devoted to the engineering design.

If anyone had hoped to hear about Phase 2, Angus, or the tax bill ... this is definitely not the Q&A you were waiting for. That said, Q&A's never include commercial information so I guess one shouldn't be surprised.

If only it was *self*-flagellation. But no, they want to scourge the rest of us. The delusion is frightening, as evidenced by wanting to "prevent Ireland being locked into fossil energy". We're *already* locked into that, unless renewable energy can work literal miracles. If you think it can, let it prove its own prowess instead of trying to conjure it into existence through legislation.

Great to hear Malcy thinks this was done "in such good time". It's been an overdue, painful slog. And he must have been looking at the 2p share price before 10am because it fell 10% to close barely up for the day. In wonder does Malcy know that SP Angel values Phase 1 at diddly squat?

An Taisce have been chasing this and clogging up the courts for over two years. They objected when Kilkenny County Council approved the plant in November 2019. They then put in an appeal against the planning to An Bord Pleanala in early 2020. That was rejected and ABP rubberstamped permission for the plant in July 2020. An Taisce then sought a judicial review. When this failed they went to the High Court. When that failed they took it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gave them permission to pursue the case, but that case has now failed and the plant will go ahead. Initially it was going to start construction in early 2021 and be operational in 2022. An Taisce have not only cost the applicant a ton of time and money but have wasted their own funds on this nuttery. And when I say "their own", obviously I mean the Irish taxpayer's. An Taisce's core funding comes from ... wait for it ... Sleepy Ryan's DCCAE department. It's a premonition of what might be to come if Sleepy doesn't manage to strangle Barryroe on his own. He still has other quasi-governmental hounds to unleash.

This is a welcome milestone. I'd begun to wonder if there was some serious reason for a holdup with Phase 1. This puts those fears to bed. As far as I can see it still leaves SOU about a year behind schedule for meeting bond repayments, but I'm supposing that can be renegotiated. Now it's all about money for the Annoual drill, G&A costs, possible tax bill, Phase 2, and where ANGS fits into all this. Clever of Graham to time the Q&A for after the Phase 1 milestone was achieved. Allows him to highlight some good news and kick the other issues to touch, which I expect he will -- not necessarily out of sinister motives but because they are unresolved.

The "Q" part of the Q&A closed last Friday -- when are we expecting the "A"? About time Graham ended what seems like a news blackout under the pretext of being gagged by the ANGS bid. There's nothing stopping him from expanding on the very vague (and IMO implausible) rationale given in the 18-Jan RNS. Is SOU desperately stuck for short term cash? Or was it just taking advantage of a doubling of SOU's share price on Phase 1 and Phase 2 news, and a near halving of ANG's share price on news of operational delays at Saltfleetby, to make an opportunistic all-share bid for ANGS in December? It's a pain that the SOU deadline for an offer has been extended from today for nearly another month, as it seems Graham plans to stay tight-lipped.

Meanwhile ... where the hell is Phase 1? Graham's comment on the December 1st RNS was: "Much work has been completed in the last month and contracts finalised with Ital Fluids. We are confident that all conditions precedent to the LNG GSA will be satisfied imminently and consequently the 'Notice to Proceed' with Phase 1 development can be announced once all contracts are executed." So how come, if contracts were finalised with Ital Fluids by end of November, did the end of December RNS announcing finalisation of the loan with Afriquia state that: "Conditions precedent to the Loan include a project contract with Italfluid being effective"? Nevertheless, Graham stated: "we will now move to issuing the Notice to Proceed to Italfluid and drawing down initial funding from the Afriquia Gaz loan in order to proceed with execution of the Phase 1 development." Seven weeks later, still crickets. And it turns out Graham has been off chasing ANGS since before that RNS issued. A frank update is more than overdue.

Also, not to forget, the 90 day deadline on progressing Phase 2 is up sometime around end of next week. I presume, since he was willing to do the Q&A, that Graham has answers on all these issues and we'll get to hear them shortly.

Yet another vid -- why the US plan to generate 60% of power from solar by 2050 is doomed. Bit of an anti-Musk rant at the start, and some wrong terminology for power and energy units, but the numbers are basically sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPYWyqy1hng

Half-decent video article from Deutsche Welle:

Energy crisis: Will a green transition throw the global economy into recession?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0GT-oZD8nc

What sort of BS is Martin spinning? We can export wind power at those times when everyone has too much and it's almost worthless. We're going to need 100% backup forever for those guaranteed times when the wind is 100% not blowing. Our vulnerability is never going away until we have our own RELIABLE sources of power.

Here's a story with a familiar twist: "Cuadrilla ordered to plug and abandon shale gas fracking wells in Lancashire"
https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-cuadrilla-ordered-to-plug-and-abandon-shale-gas-fracking-wells-in-lancashire-12538040
"But Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network group of 123 MPs, said fracked gas had limited potential to reduce energy bills, because of our population density and pipelines to the European gas market"

Same old same old. Let's not extract our own resources because we can get them from someone bigger and pretend we are reducing our carbon footprint. From Russia to Europe, from Europe to the UK, from the UK to Ireland. Everyone (except Russia) painting themselves as a paragon of green virtue while galloping toward the edge of an energy cliff.

Ryan's retrofit scheme is the latest madness -- 8 billion of public money in grants for "deep" energy upgrades. Expecting householders to spend up to 50k each on projects that will never yield a return on investment and have been shown in other countries to be not worth it. Is there anyone sane who is looking at the economic impact of this nuttery? Overall plan for 2030 is to spend 120 billion. As the costs bite, I expect the pushback to increase. Too late for Providence though, most likely.

The plan for EVs on the road by 2030 never made sense. There were about 8,600 new all-electric vehicles last year, about 8.2% of the total. In the last two years the number of EVs as a percentage of all vehicle sales went up by 50% each year. Even if that continued so that 90% of all new sales were EVs by 2027, you'd still barely get to half the government target by 2030. And there is no way the rate will increase by that level because at the moment it is all low-hanging fruit.

But suppose we did get to their 935,000 which would be nearly half the total car fleet. Transport in Ireland uses a little over 6,000 kilotons of oil equivalent at present. Private cars count for about 40% of that. If half those cars were electric, and the grid-to-wheels efficiency of electric cars is twice as good as petrol, the energy requirement works out at about a gigawatt of continuous power. But charging demand is unlikely to be continuously spread out, so peak electricity demand would probably increase by several gigawatts on top of the current five or so gigawatts. And that's to electrify about 20% of transport energy usage.

Then there is all the additional power needed for their planned electrification of space heating. Plus all the additional power for projected increase in general demand. And Ryan says we will generate 80% of that from wind power.

And bear in mind that all this will need to be 100% backed up by fossil fuel generation because, as we have seen, the wind doesn't blow in Ireland for weeks at a stretch. But Ryan says we don't need gas in the Euro taxonomy because we won't need so much and we can important it all from the UK anyway, a non-EU country with its own energy issues. But the point is we're going to need to double or triple our gas-fired generating capacity. I wonder does Ryan think private capital will flock to finance that when, according to him, they are only going to be 20% utilised.

The whole thing sounds b@t**** crazy and I believe Ryan is sending us to hell in a handcart. I would love to see some actual numbers worked out by someone other than a barking mad Green.

Sounds like a potential basket case. If I understand it right, they also have to drill a sidetrack to meet required volumes. But they can't drill the sidetrack and meet the current schedule commitments. And they also can't drill the sidetrack after going into production. Catch-22.

Somewhere along the way An Taisce seem to have morphed from a National Trust concerned with heritage to a bunch of dark green econuts.

Article on danger of gas supply disruption: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2022/0204/1277746-russia-gas-supply-costs-disruption-europe-ireland/

"a physical disruption would be catastrophic for the country. Any domestic production or storage would be beneficial if it were to occur. Last year, the Government commenced a study to review these risks and understand mitigation options. A price disruption is a more likely outcome for Ireland from any interruption in gas from Russia into Europe, but having indigenous production would be of marginal benefit in this case. Gas is sold at international market prices and it would not lead to lower prices for consumers in Ireland, except for forgoing the cost of transporting gas across from the UK, which is small."

In the UK, the debate on the cost of energy may be about to get a lot more polarised with Farage threatening to lead an anti-net-zero campaign:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkSJK0efHZ8

The RNS is pretty much as expected. A few tidbits of information that we didn't know already. Such as that the price of a single appraisal well is twice the current market cap of PVR. Get ready for big dilution, I guess. *IF* the lease undertaking ever gets signed off. And the actual field development is too far in the future for the RNS to even speculate about costs, but presumably a couple of hundred mil for Phase 1a. A bit frustrating to watch the oil price go through the roof while PVR totters along on its merry way. ("Bloomberg -- Oil has rocketed to a fresh seven-year high near $93 a barrel, and almost every indicator is pointing to the rally extending."). I wasn't expecting anything solid on funding in the RNS so no surprises there. No information on immediate next steps either. Do we just sit around while Sleep scratches his saddle-worn whatnots?

WTI just followed Brent above the $90 mark. If you can't fund hydrocarbon development at these levels then I worry for the planet, not just Ireland.

How about a little ****** outburst there Gunther (aka TheShen) so we can get you banned again quickly?

Austria and Luxembourg threatening to take legal action against the EU over the new taxonomy. There's a four month period to voice objections. But sounds like it will go ahead anyway. Also, Mairead McGuinness sounding more positive than before:
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But European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness said "we need to use all the tools at our disposal" to reach the climate-neutral target. Private investment was "key", she said, and the proposals were "setting out strict conditions to help mobilise finance to support this transition, away from more harmful energy sources like coal".
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60229199

Let's not forget end of February is also the deadline for conditions attached to the GSA with ONEE, including authorisations, pipeline interconnection agreement, funding, Phase 2 FID, and commencement of works. One would have to guess there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that happening and we will see an extension, but the distraction of Angus can hardly be helping. Meanwhile, what has happened to Phase *1* FID?