Member Info for romaron

bit beyond me but i think it explains labour's position. in his speech today keir starmer says -"....opportunity to deliver lower bills not just sticking plaster when its just for this year or next year with a windfall tax that cannot be sustained

.... security, putin's foot on our throat then this ... "oil and gas is sold on the international market so that doesn't help reduce bills" (during qa with bbc journalist)

there you have it. you'll have labour's foot on the throat of the people of this country when it comes to energy security. it used to be called nationalisation. that's why they hate o&g. they cannot dictate to it or make it obey. there will never be a rapprochment between labour and the o&g industry. pointless arguing with a brick wall but here comes the kicker. it is dawning on them [labor] that they cannot run this country without o&g and the globalisation of a fungible product makes it very hard to bring it under government control. it will be an uneasy peace but like it or not. oil and gas are essential. ideologists don't get it but the voters do. ks even said earlier that he visited a steelworks in s****horpe desperate for change "and they don't glue themselves to things".

labour are performing a juggling act regarding o&g. they hate it but need it. the voters are watching.

Https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/energy-bills-labour-starmer-speech-b2360096.html

"Winds of change blowing fiercely" - no mention of intermittency but I'm being petty. Ed was on earlier and mentioned that wind costs were down 60% in a decade and solar 89% (I'm no mathematician but how does that equate to 9 X cheaper?) Later Kier said that renewables were now 3X cheaper than fossil fuels. The promise of £1400 off energy bills by 2030 sounds to me like a vote winner and an actual number.

Also said "WFT can't be sustained" with no explanation. No cliff edge. Partnership with industry (didn't specifically mention O&G industry but that was the inference).

In QA the ITV guy tried to nail KS down on any more licenses granted before next election as per Rosebank. My reading is that he [KS] is creating wriggle room so it is up to us [EnQuest] to make sure that we beat the deadline and get BB applications in.

Kieran Andrews kinda spoilt the party when he asked what happened to the Hydrogen bus that they were told would take journalists to the venue. The diesel replacement with a driver unsure of the way to the venue wasn't the best advert.

"That's why Labour has a plan for clean power by 2030. Cheap, home-grown clean power to cut bills for families across the country alongside GB Energy our publicly owned energy company to deliver for communities across Britain."

Ed Miliband earlier today https://twitter.com/UKLabour

It is meaningless. I hope they remember their words regarding renewables being 9 X cheaper. It relates to electricity which we can't live without (no computer games, Eastenders or cups of tea). Wait until winter when we have to turn the heating back on or use the ICE vehicles that most can only afford. I think we might see a stutter in the production of EV's now the status symbol chasers have gone for the 'dream'. Second hand EV values not only don't compete with petrol or diesel in depreciation but also start at a higher price. We all know cars lose value but why would you select a group that lose more money faster?

The announcements from Labour so far today are just one big yawn without any detail. They are pinning themselves to CHEAP electricity. The REAL world can be uncompromising. They'll find it harder to provide cheap energy than to find scapegoats or hide the true cost without increasing subsidies. If this was a handicap fossil are carrying 12st and renewables 8st 2lbs with a 7lb claimer riding. You can do that when you ignore capital costs, offshore emissions and intermittency.

Front page of Sunday Times “Starmer in retreat on North Sea oil pledge”.

About Rosebank mainly but it creates precedents. “Labour has since promised not to revoke any fossil fuel extraction licenses granted before the next general election, even though it could take YEARS before any of the new oil and gas fields start producing.” Starmer is understood to have made a promise to Equinor re Rosebank. He also conveyed a similar message personally to a number of energy giants, including Shell and BP, during a round of phone calls on Friday. He spoke to the companies ahead of the launch of his party’s 2030 clean power mission in Edinburgh tomorrow.

I think it is more prosaic than that. On P.2 there is another headline “Labour on course to beat SNP, poll shows.” It would dramatically raise Keir Starmer’s chances of entering Downing Street next year. Scottish Labour are not happy with the Westminster labour’s plans to give British jobs to Russian workers or indeed, green jobs to the Chinese. The Jocks aren’t particularly fond of the metropolitan elite and likely to make their feelings felt at the ballot box.

I’m excited about the potential for Bressay/Bentley. They aren’t discoveries. If it is accepted that they come under the same conditions as Rosebank it would be a massive boost for our share price (doubling overnight imo). I know the ‘environmental statement’ for Bentley was ongoing and had produced oil but have scant knowledge of Bressay or come to that, Rosebank. What stage is Rosebank at? FDP, FID – it is expected to get the go-ahead within weeks so that might clarify.

I know people will say –“how would we fund Bressay or Bentley?” It will require a farm in or a merger. Us shareholders can’t afford another raise. It shouldn’t be too difficult with the amount of private equity sniffing around this bombed out sector - plus we have Gareth Penny on board. Remember – politics always trumps logic and economics but getting elected trumps everything. That is why Labour is changing. I wonder if they’ll ditch Ed Miliband or he might resign? Here’s hoping.

Be Lucky

I was involved in EPC's around 2008-2010. This particular tweet does have a bearing on what is presently happening:

https://twitter.com/khadljasays/status/1669635804245663744/photo/1

There is a link between Net Zero and Grenfell. The rush to do good always has a cost. Will society pay that cost? In the case of Grenfell it was false economics and a weak regulatory body imo. Unforeseen consequences follow every action. I have no wish to trivialise the terrible events but British society has been handfed with beneficence and a safety net that includes many who frankly are undeserving. Like children they can protest about whatever their latest interest is. It doesn't usually last and is often self-indulgent with a strong element of narcissism.

We'd all like cheap energy and clean air. The cost will be high and NO party will explain how we are going to achieve targets without beggaring the country. Grenfell was, sadly, partly as a result of heaping extra expense on an already struggling sector of the community. There is no money tree.

*In 1989 my mortgage briefly went to 18 per cent and they're crying for relief from a threatened 6 per cent. Don't they realise that the cheap, cheap money was a result of the 2008/9 financial collapse. Then they had the cheap shale. Wasn't life wonderful until they took the punchbowl away. I think EnQuest deserve praise for their timing of the HYNs.

9% for money looks cheap now.

Well that's as clear as mud to me. From your post yesterday "the FPSO has four HSP transformers". To the non-engineers here there appears to be an electrical connection or is that incorrect? So pumps probably fine and it is a transformer problem of which there are 4. One for each pump is that correct? If only one transformer is working then you can only have one HSP working under existing regime.

See what happens when amateurs (me) get involved. Wish I'd never started.

I didn't say it was. Just trying to clarify. Is it 4 transformers and 4 HSPs? Not that it will make a lot of difference to me. I like it when engineers get involved. They look for facts and data. Professional accountants know the numbers but are more worried about auditors and ratios. My experience of them is that they [Accountants] follow the herd and can seldom find water or new pasture on their own (I don't include Tarmak in this btw - he is a refreshingly free thinker not hidebound by accepted accounting theology).

Hi RobertWaters - I cannot argue with your analysis as I am not a subsea engineer but so far you seem a useful addition to this message board. One tends to get suspicious of new arrivals who may have an agenda. The sentence that says "Only one of those HSPs is available for use, and the other three need to be replaced" means what? Is it the transformers or the HSPs? Or is it one transformer to one HSP and the problem is purely transformers?

The last sentence sounds like usual gossip and there may be truth in it but is unnecessary. Procrastination and getting the last bit of value out of gear isn't unique to the industry or Scotland. I expect all companies to get the maximum life out of an asset where possible and BP (for example) with all its cash isn't any different. Reads to me like there is still a lot of remote guesswork around by those not involved.

Received a nice email from my friends in the Labour party for a donation to help spread a video they've made of Rishi Sunak praising Boris Johnson. Bit juvenile really as the response might be to curate the times Keir Starmer showed solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn. The accompanying text said :

"Yesterday, Boris Johnson finally got his comeuppance.

But he could never have dragged the country through the mire without the spineless Tories who supported him.

Ronald, with three vital by-elections on the horizon, we need to get this video in front of as many voters as we can.

Watch, as we expose the truth about Rishi Sunak:

You can find the video here - https://twitter.com/UKLabour

It got me thinking. These emails are mainly preaching to the converted (not me) and has elements of OCD. I'm sure the Tories do something similar but there are some big gaps with the audience they reach. Many here no longer read newspapers and it is an age thing to some extent. The reach of social media is pretty pervasive and much of it misses me. Youtube, instagram and Tiktok is where people follow personalities rather than organisations. The news avoiding younger audience are out there and the vast, vast majority are not slow walking in front of traffic.

This is a marathon not a sprint and we need to reach them. I think a video of the times renewables were presented as 9 X cheaper than fossil fuels might be a better reply on one of the social media channels. There are a lot of voters there.

*I mentioned earlier that the FPSO had produced 60mio tonnes of moil so far. It was from memory and it is obviously 60mio barrels. Not as much but still huge. Some achievement.

"Fossil fuel companies are increasingly just returning money to shareholders, which is what you do when you're a declining sunset industry." Noah Smith, Substack.

Ignoring the inaccuracy of that statement. S&P numbers Q1 - Super-majors Exxon, Chevron & Marathon bought back $13bn of stock.

Big tech - Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft bought back $50bn of stock.

Is big tech declining too?

Sounds like you won't be happy until they've closed the FPSO down Mitoe. I think it's common procedure and I'm more impressed by the 60m tonnes of oil that have been produced so far; and that's before we even think of EOR.

Were you at the opera yesterday or maybe at a buffet somewhere else?

"“The just transition commission has been running for years. The commission has consumed more buffets at lunch time than they have created jobs. The jobs in the Scottish energy transition are all being done halfway round the world.”

*GMB boss slams SNP over hypocrisy.

"Current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said this week that he believes artificial intelligence (AI) could help Labour achieve its aim of clean power generation by 2030.

Sir Keir said at London Tech Week on Tuesday that Labour’s plan is a “stretched target”, but one that he believes is possible with the help of AI technology."

Whilst we thought they were concentrating on fairy dust and unicorn tears to achieve net zero they come up with yet another brilliant solution. AI is guaranteed to solve all our problems, right? It really is beyond parody.

Keir Starmer 'believes'. Many believe in the The Rapture and I doubt that'll be here either before 2050.

Energy is slipping down the populism stakes so expect Labour to start looking elsewhere for a stick to beat the Tories with. Rishi Sunak mentioned a couple of time that they were paying half the energy bills of people but it was a battle he'd won anyway so took the opportunity to attack Labour on it. He mentioned Rachel Reeves backtracking on the £28bn green technology flagship and the next day being overruled by the shadow energy minister, Ed Miliband, who said 100% they are not abandoning their pledge. He drove home the Labour policy to ban all new oil and gas drilling and putting 200,000 jobs at risk. Instead of British jobs for British workers it was playing into the hands of Russian despot Putin and "British jobs for Russian workers".

No sign of boy wonder Ed on the bench.

Later a member of the Alba party of Scotland got up and said you couldn't tell the difference between Tory/Labour when it came to plundering Scotland's natural resources.

You can watch on Politics live on BBC iplayer. 53:00 to 54:30 and at 1:01. In the post debate the panel never mentioned energy. We're slipping off the radar. I think Keir Starmer might like to ditch Miliband but he's scared of the extremists on the Left.

R.S. also mentioned that Labour had voted against the Public Order Bill amendment this week over the disruption caused by Eco-Zealots.

Confusion cleared up - to a point. The article referred to by EV was in The Times yesterday and the digital copy another investor sent me has Tuesday June 13 5.30pm on it which may be the time it was posted or he looked at it. The article in today's edition is more in relation to JSO but both are significant. They kinda cross over but I conflated them. From both you can only draw the conclusion that KS is repositioning himself. He is so close to achieving his lifelong aim that he isn't going to lose out at the last moment. He could easily say "these are my principles and if you don't like them, I have others".

Tuesday's article by Kieran Andres, Scottish Political Editor reads almost like a leak but why this "Writing for The Times, the UK Labour leader has again attempted to reframe the narrative around the party’s energy plan, which would include banning new licences for fossil fuel extraction."

I'm at a loss with these shenanigans but agree with Tigar (today 11:10) that if anyone can do a 180 degree wheelie it is a senior politician.

O/T I went to a talk between James Comey and Armando Iannucci Monday evening that discussed lying. JC repeated what Steve Bannon said about lies. If you lie, lie big, keep repeating and never back down. "Flood the media space with sh*t". It does relate a lot to attention span and what you want to hear.

Make no mistake. Kier Starmer will forget a lot of what he said and the spin will be wonderful.

Couple of other articles - both good for us imo. Centrica has made huge profits and this time they won't be able to blame the O&G industry. Even more interesting is that the Nikkei has after decades of underperformance hit a 30 year high. The world's fund managers have flipped from 11% underweight to 4% overweight in the space of a few weeks. That is how quick it can change. The decision by the value investor Warren Buffet to lift his exposure to Japan has also helped galvanise interest in the market.

(cont)

Its excuses aren’t convincing. Yvette Cooper, Sir Keir’s shadow home secretary, complains that in just two years ministers have brought forward five separate sets of proposals to combat such demonstrations, that slow walking is already against the law, and that new powers are too broadly drawn. It is certainly true that the government has taken much too long to wake up to the scale of the problem, and that what steps have been taken thus far are manifestly inadequate. On that, at least, Ms Cooper is right.

But it does not follow that new legislation is inherently useless. Labour’sinsist

Ence that police already have the means to break up Just Stop Oil’s carnivals of vanity will come back as news to those forced to waste hours in tailbacks. Sir Keir should not pose as a champion of working people unless he is willing to whip his MPs to stand up to their tormentors. These demonstrations make a mockery of the law and a serious political party would do something about them.

Carnivals of vanity

Sir Keir Starmer must back new measures to combat Just Stop Oil demonstrations

It was not all that long ago that Sir Keir Starmer liked to remind Labour members of his pedigree as the protestor’s lawyer: the barrister who had stood in solidarity with environmental activists as they resisted new motorways and pollution in the North Sea in the 1990’s. Now, as befits a credible candidate for prime minister, he instead offers a passable impression of a man who sees today’s green radicals for what they are: juvenile, irresponsible and self-indulgent. “Go home,” Sir Keir said of Just Stop Oil in October, adding. “I think their action is wrong.”

Rhetoric is one thing. Sir Keir’s language is appropriately uncompromising. From these denunciations, voters nervous of the Labour Left’s historical sympathy with protest movements are encouraged to infer that a Starmer government would yield not an inch to the zealots who have wreaked such misery on London’s motorists. Yet the opposition’s voting record tells a rather different story. This week MPs voted on measures that would empower police to break up demonstrations with the potential to cause “more than minor” disruption. Labour voted against them.

As it stands, the updated Public Order Act passed earlier this year permits police to interfere only with protests that cause “significant” or “prolonged” disruption to everyday life. Such significant and prolonged disruption, quite clearly, is the very point of the campaign being waged by Just Stop Oil – and its effect. By now it ought to be obvious that they will not end their funereal processions across the capital until they are forced to. The police, however, still appear unconvinced that they have the powers to do so. This is unsustainable, and it is right that ministers have moved to amend legislation to ensure that the full force of the law is felt by the nihilists of just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

If Sir Keir reall is opposed to protests that play havoc with the livelihood of working people and endanger the sick, why did his MPs oppose the government’s amendment? That he has walked into such an obvious trap is no compliment to his political judgement. Labour has also accepted £1.5 million in donations from Dale Vince, the environmentalist entrepreneur whose fortunes also bankroll Just Stop oil. To suggest Mr Vince was somehow the author of Labour’s green policies would be absurd. But these apparent inconsistencies leave labour vulnerable. (cont)

Dumbly - 10:41 you are right to be confused. The Energy Voice article started with "Writing for the Times, UK Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has continued to soften his stance on North Sea oil and gas" and that is plain wrong; even false news imo. The EV journalist is sloppy and unless the Times online edition had a misprint should edit the article.

I bought the paper this morning and have gone through it several times. I have the article he alludes to and have copied it in full in the next two posts. Its headline and subtitle is "Carnivals of vanity" and "Sir Keir Starmer must back new measures to combat Just Stop Oil demonstrations".

It is on P.27 under "Leading Articles" and usually has Editorial backing.

I used to subscribe to EV and gave it up because of its inaccuracies. I don't buy the Times everyday as I must have some Scottish blood (or Yorkshire) and insist on reading everything to get my money's worth (£2.80) plus it takes too long and I'm running out of runway.

The article underpins basically everything we have been saying and writing. I was told in February at a JSO meeting that the slow marches were planned for April. Among others I wrote to the Met Commissioner, my MP and the London Mayor.

The Met never replied but the other two did and I got mealy-mouthed responses about the inalienable right to protest (especially if it p*sses off the Tories).

Apart from the obvious inaccuracy the article is correct and informative and I (laboriously) copied it in full for all the tight-wads and especially the overseas investors. Posting it after this.

With the right 'interpretation' and massaging maybe Bressay and Bentley licenses are 'already granted'? This is when lobbyists should earn their fees.

Writing for The Times, UK Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer has continued to soften his stance on North Sea oil and gas.

“Let me be clear: those who think we should somehow simply end domestic oil and gas production in Britain are wrong,” he said.

“Under Labour’s plans, they will play a crucial part in our energy mix for decades to come.”

Sir Keir said “we will not be revoking any licences” meaning those already granted will be honoured.

It comes after a piece – via a leak to the Sunday Times – last month, sent industry reeling as a Labour spokesperson said the party would prevent further licensing, instead using “existing oil and gas wells over the coming decades”.

It’s unclear how Labour proposes to use existing wells for “decades” in the North Sea, but Starmer is to launch the party’s election policy in Scotland next week.

Also suggestion that 9X Ed got his wrist slapped recently. He has been awfully quiet. That's what happens when you give free rein to an ideologue. Common sense and economics have a terrible habit of refusing to go away.

Source EV - I may get the Times when I'm out.

.... and there's no 'sell-by date' for our oil -it's still there and who knows , it may be higher in a few weeks? I expect AB has made a few contacts in his business life, especially with Petrofac and when it comes to the FPSO Richard Hall is no slouch either and has set up a services company in the past. Things going wrong in the North Sea is hardly a surprise or unexpected.