Member Info for romaron

From Private Eye P.39 :

"average tenders for green hydrogen have come in at more than 8X the cost of natural gas. Only huge subsidies will make this fly.

Technological improvements might bring costs down somewhat, but some obstacles will never go away. Most theoretical cases for green hydrogen as an economic proposition hinge on the idea that in some circumstances electricity (the main input cost) can be essentially free - eg at 3am on a windy day when windpower greatly exceeds electricity demand, as often happens. There are 2 big flaws in this reasoning.

Firstly, if there is any "free" overnight electricity on offer, many others will be in the queue, not least due to the anticipated boom in "smart chargers" for electric vehicles that will respond instantly to very low prices. Secondly, hydrogen-producing electrolysers do not respond well to being switched on and off as prices fluctuate; they operate best in a steady state. But ultra cheap electricity is available only sporadically. These factors tell against using hydrogen as a form of energy storage too.

Can these circles be squared? Germany seems hell-bent on testing the theories to destruction whatever the cost. Note to the incoming government: it might be prudent to let it."

Two observations.

1. Germany is deeper in the caca than us.

2. hydrogen is transportable, burns well , emits no CO2 and can be produced sustainably. Have they looked at Unicorn manure which has these qualities in abundance plus it smells of roses?

This is speculation on my part. AR6 bids are opened. National Grid ESO will notify applicants of the results 28 June-1 July.

https://www.cfdallocationround.uk/ar6-timeline

I'm thinking there is some reticence on the part of those applying at the lower end because of the risk of 'stranded assets'. If the infrastructure (pylons etc.) aren't there to carry the electricity then it may be a risk too far. The public would be in uproar if subsidising wind turbines that are paid to remain idle. A lot depends on planning and I the resistance in the shires will make juststopoil look like a kindergarden squabble when peoples' views, land and house values are threatened. I am more interested therefore in offshore wind pricing for now.

I don't mind being wrong and I kinda accept that there is a conspiracy of silence from all political parties (except Reform) because it is in their manifestos. However, if the timeline means anything (and why delay? It's supposed to be a 'crisis') then bodies out there know the results. I will be pressing all my contacts and new MP to find out why we aren't informed once the election is out of the way.

"Don't be evil" - Google's greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 were 48% higher than in 2019. Their 2030 target for NZ may be 'challenging' .

*'challenging' is the new term for impossible.

My point about the earlier post is that Labour will make much of the fact that Norway makes money with high rates of tax but they won't be comparing like with like. They {Norway] have the cheapest electricity in Europe at source and it also makes EV's more attractive although enthusiasm for them even in Norway is waning. It also make heat pumps more attractive but it seems that most Norwegians keep a stove and an ICE car as well. They can afford to. Their insulation and construction of homes has always been better than ours out of necessity - it's bloody freezing there in winter, ask a polar bear.

*when Al Gore was born there were 7,000 polar bears on Earth. Today there are only 30,000.

Another point is that they are blessed with mountains and hydro-electricity which is why you had to disband your mountain-rescue team. The same reason Cambridgeshire fell running never really took off.

*M lives in Belgium

First they came for the kids .....

But KO have you asked your niece if you can refer to her as "she"? She may be a non-binary transexual detransitioning. I'm not even sure if "niece" is permitted.

It's people like you that are threatening this eternal grift of creating non-existent persecution (well it is compared to the persistent abuse that you and me suffer from being born white and no longer teenagers). I bet you even own your own house and pay taxes.

I should have said poorly presented. I don't follow Serica that closely and rely on sources like EV. Might just as well get our news off Twitter and TikTok.

Thanks M - I missed that so today's EV is poorly researched.

"Earlier this year, Serica Energy’s chief executive officer at the time of the loan agreement, Mitch Flegg, announced that he will leave the company after six years.

Current chairman of the board David Latin took on the role of interim CEO until a long-term successor is appointed."

M - Jonathan Leake wrote both articles. I'm suspicious of this guy. He writes for the Telegraph but at times you'd think he was writing for the Guardian. He invents stuff as in the retraction about an article on EnQuest he wrote. People I have spoken to seem reticent about divulging information about him. He is a go to journalist in the same way that the Tories use Oliver Dowden when obfuscation and dulling down is required. There seems to be a bit of a mist involving his 3 years as National Media manager with OEUK 2020-2023. Hardly a massive success.

I'm not convinced he is impartial. The Labour party know they can feed him and he is a willing diner.

Are up to something. They've increased their borrowing base on $463m loan facility to full amount of $525m. They have liquidity now in excess of £500m with a further option increasing the potential to more than $1bn liquidity.

Source Energy Voice today.

I'm not saying we're involved but even if not in an ever decreasing pool vacuums are created and will be filled. Serica have stated that they are seeking growth opportunities abroad. That could be a veiled threat to the politicians but what really interests me is that David Latin is only the interim CEO until a long-term successor is appointed.

Everything is on hold until the election is decided and Labour inform us what a 'proper windfall tax' is. The next few months will be VERY interesting.

Be my guest Mansardman. We are all getting more proficient at presenting our rants unfortunately, practice. I was thinking about Farage. Yes, he is an opportunist but he has a skill of turning the fears and hopes of ordinary people into a coherent opposition. I hated him during Brexit as I was in the other team but exaggeration and lies comes with the territory. Its got worse since with Labour and Tories [Boris and Ed]. I fell out with pals but I now accept he [Farage]was right about things like the ECHR and Brussels waste. We should have rulers who have experience of work and industry - not a cabal of priests and lawyers. Net Zero is an aspiration that somehow became a law without the voters ever being informed of the true costs - conclusion is that costs don't really matter even though they will dwarf the cost of the NHS and defending our borders. Sovereignty actually belongs to all of us - not just activists and politicians. What is happening in France doesn't surprise me. Vichy France never disappeared (they fought the British in WW2). They called it an armistice rather than abject surrender to the Germans whilst still having an Empire and the fourth largest navy in the world. Paris was declared an 'open city' whilst my grandfather and fathers house in London was destroyed in the Blitz.

The two largest parties have created a rump that may attract disillusioned voters from both Left and Right. It does appeal to older voters but everybody gets old and it doesn't mean you become irrelevant or are automatically gammon. I will just about tolerate a 'you shouldn't say that grandad' but I equate ra*cists with paedophiles. Reform have momentum and are cleaning up their act. I hope Labour take notice as finally Net Zero has some real opposition.

If an O&G company was guilty of flouting regulations that resulted in a spill then they would justifiably be fined for breaking the rules, causing pollution or endangering life. The Tories imposed a draconian tax under the cover of a temporary windfall that will last almost 7 years. It is a fine and a punitive tax on an essential industry that isn't actually guilty of making "windfall profits" in the UKCS. We are being punished because we were actually doing what the country wants and needs. The majority of us will continue to rely on oil and gas for decades to come. Instead the politicians prefer to import it and destroy jobs. As individuals we are trapped here and cannot escape whatever form of heating and transport costs the government in power chooses to impose on us. That doesn't apply to the O&G industry or, come to that, other industries that require a lot of energy. They can leave our shores. I like living in the UK. I read that US energy costs are 5X cheaper than ours and we somehow think it is something worth boasting about because we are world leaders in reducing emissions.

Poor but proud isn't something I will vote for.

Never good news from an O&G company but things do go wrong and projects fail, so it is with some sadness I have to post the following.

"Shell said in a statement that following the decision to pause construction, "contractor numbers will reduce on site and activity will slow down, helping to control costs and optimise project sequencing." UBS analyst Joshua Stone said that the pause was consistent with Shell's strategy to focus on returns. Shell will also consider an impairment for the project and will provide further details in its quarterly trading update on Friday, it said."

This is a biofuel project and following BP's decision to halt offshore wind projects to renew focus on oil and gas it does make me question where the private investment for Labour's grandiose schemes will come from? Default is the public purse and energy bills.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/shell-to-pause-dutch-biofuels-project-as-market-sags/ar-BB1pg5xh

Forecast: There will remain a resentful rump of disillusioned voters who feel marginalised but not radicalised by the religious cult sweeping the western world. They will be joined by the tattered remains of the Tory party. Battle lines are being drawn. NHS and immigration costs have nothing on the rush to electrify. Unchecked it will bankrupt the country.

"Net zero scepticism, alongside immigration restrictionism, is now populist-coded. Embracing it makes you an outsider — with all the social and career implications that entails. No amount of data is going to change that fact.

Yet, if persuasion will not work, Farage’s strategy of pitiless assault might just do the trick. With one buttress of the Net Zero consensus — the Conservative Party establishment — set to be shattered, the next few years of growing public resentment of Labour’s eco-radicalism will leave ample opportunity for a reformed right to pull down the teetering structure. If not, it’s only a matter of time before the Net Zero project collapses under its own weight. The country is heading towards a future of unsustainable household bills to prop up a Net Zero project that, ultimately, cannot be made to work. If neither Farage, nor objective facts, can burst the green bubble, reality will."

https://thecritic.co.uk/farage-bursts-the-green-bubble/

Today July 1 2024 in Energy Voice "UK could get £57 billion economic boost by going green, CBI says"

“You can never say it enough – Clean British power is cheaper than imported fossil fuels. Nine times cheaper.” Nov 22 2022 Keir Starmer to the CBI conference.

If I was an O&G company or involved in the supply chain and still a member I would cancel my subscription - today. They call themselves a lobby group. Is it for Ed Miliband or the Green Party?

SINGAPORE, July 1 (Reuters) - China is setting up a new entity that groups national oil producers and other state firms to search for ultra-deep oil and gas reserves and tackle harder-to-extract non-conventional resources, state energy group CNPC said on Monday.

This is in answer to President Xi Jinping's call for the sector to have "new productive forces" that will contribute to the country's energy security, CNPC said on its website.

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In China Bressay and Bently would be considered as contributing to 'Energy Security'.

Https://davidturver.substack.com/p/risk-net-zero-worse-climate-change?utm_source=substack&publication_id=1285567&post_id=145988666&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=lx6e9&triedRedirect=true

The above from David Turner is superb. Just a taste:

"Net Zero is driving us to penury. Significant damage has already been done with productive industries shrinking compared to the whole economy since 1997. The trouble is, these industries are far more productive in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) per hour worked than most service industries, and they consume more energy. This is why Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that the “chemicals industry in the UK is finished” and the main reason is that energy costs are five times those of the US and there are carbon taxes levied on such products. This explains why we have lost six times as many jobs in energy intensive industries than have been gained in our green energy sector (see Figure 5)."

Mu only concern is what if he is wrong (along with Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook) and data centres can be run on zephyrs and sunbeams?

*our last fertilizer plant announced its closure in July due to high energy prices (5X more than US). Equivalent to demilitarizing as the rest of the world gets more dangerous.

You can hardly get a cigarette paper between the 7th day Adventists and others who believers in the second coming and an Eco-zealot. Both believe a day of reckoning is fast approaching. When it doesn't happen you just produce another model with lines crossing in the future or veering skyward. You can also repeat the chant that a "consensus of climate scientist believe" which always trumps actual science. I found this:

Adventists believe this in its straightforward terms. Jesus will return on a cloud, staying in the sky. He will not set foot on the ground. The dead in Christ will rise up with Him, and those living will soon follow, as we're all “caught up together” in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17)

I also found it remarkably similar to Game of Thrones Season 8 "The Long Night". which of course did actually happen. I know because I saw it.

Winter is coming.

I sent them a similar letter. It is with Sharon Graham's office and I also was given a hotline email which I used to add a calculated response I received following ORIT's AGM last week. They ignored my question in the QA at the time -

From ORIT - "We will know AR6 results at the end of this month (10 days time). Is the strike price this time for offshore wind adequate on this auction. You say power prices are falling but they've only gone up over the past 3 years? Response: We do not have any projects bidding into AR6 but we do expect offshore wind projects to come forward, albeit not as many as could have done so given the assumptions feeding into the budget cap for the auction. Whilst electricity prices remain high compared with long term averages, the current price levels are significantly below the peaks of 2022."

I suppose it is standard practise now to use "Christmas eve emergency plumber" prices as a base (2022) as every thing has "crisis" in the title nowadays - cost of living, climate, NHS, education etc...

Gord knows how I've survived this long. I grew up without foodbanks using coal.

I sent this letter to them on 17 June -

North Sea Jobs

Dear Gary,

This is a follow up to my letter to you of 8 June 2023. There is an important date on the near horizon and it may help your members who rely on the North Sea Oil and Gas industry for their livelihood. That date is 28 June and no later than 1 July 2024. That is the scheduled release for the National Grid ESO to notify applicants of the results of the AR6 allocation of the CfD round for clean energy; particularly offshore wind. https://www.cfdallocationround.uk/ar6-timeline

It is an esoteric process but some figures are indisputable. The last auction (AR5) was a failure because it was priced too low and NO bids were received (ASP £44/MWh) and this current auction the ASP is increased to £73 MWh. They are at 2012 prices and the price in today’s money is £100-£103 when inflation is brought in. What is indisputable is that it is a 66% increase.

The public are unaware of this and there is this time a comparison. Norway did their first CfD for offshore wind this March and the successful bid was NOK 1,150 MWh (c. £84.35).

We cannot predict the success or level of bids in AR6 but if it was at the high end of estimates then there is a potential hike of 22% ABOVE the Norwegian price for what I used to think was a similar product. No major political party wants the public to know the true costs of renewables. They are going to bankrupt this country in the pursuit of ideology. The energy transition cannot happen overnight.

If there is no political capital for either major party then I expect the results of AR6 to be swept under the carpet and released post-election. In the spirit of transparency you should demand that the public know the true cost of renewables before they vote.

I hope this helps your members

Today I received a letter signed by Gary Smith saying the matter is being looked into. They can let the allocation process run until September but that is really for appeals and arguing technicalities. This auction is so important it should be announced before 4 July. I doubt it will because BOTH parties are complicit in lying to the public but there is no harm in trying.