Member Info for romaron

Thanks Stevo - I knew it would be a lot and with a billion here and a billion there you're soon talking real money. What still confounds me is that neither party will point out the actual costs of the green energy transition to reach where we are today and the actual cost of electricity on a LCOE basis going forward. I imagine it is a combination of both parties playing to businesses and banks whilst finding a neutral ground that appeals to most voters. Basically, a weak argument but still on the side of a "just energy transition" and don't mention the true cost. Germany iis already losing its industrial base on energy costs and we'll be next. I bet they [Germany] wouldn't abandon O&G if they had it in quantity.

Both parties are quiet about Orsted but I think Ed Miliband has most to fear here after being a champion of them.

I toyed with an electric car because I have a drive and range is only a problem a few times a year but the sums never made sense. I met some of my brothers last week and we met on the large estate 2where we were brought up. They are all ex council houses built in the 50's and few have drive access. Cars and vans were parked everywhere, in the road and on verges. You couldn't play football anywhere as we did as kids and the cars are not top-of-the-range. I cannot see EV's penetrating here and I liken them to large limousines that lose value much quicker than small runarounds. Second hand EVs will be cheap because they don't fulfill requirements and charging difficulties remain. Insurance, repairs and battery renewal are real considerations. Many of the cars I saw were 20 years old and still performing their function. How would a 20 year old EV do? If it needed a new battery there is no comparison. Would you even consider a new battery?

I expect more of this stuff to come out and the holes in the 'green revolution' with true costs attached will leak into the mainstream.

Will he do the decent thing tomorrow and resign. Labour will reportedly abandon its policy of spending £28 billion a year on environmental projects in a major U-turn following months of uncertainty about the pledge. An announcement on the party's flagship green prosperity plan is expected to be made on Thursday. All over the BBC News.

Apparently they will continue towards clean power by 2030. Anybody have a clue what "clean power" is?

It certainly won't be achieved by this:

"Clean Power by 2030. A Labour government would:

Pioneer floating offshore wind, by fast-tracking at least 5 GW of capacity.

More than double our onshore wind capacity to 35 GW.

More than triple solar power to 50 GW.

Quadruple offshore wind with an ambition of 55 GW by 2030.

Get new nuclear projects at Hinkley and Sizewell over the line, extending the lifetime of existing plants, and backing new nuclear including Small Modular Reactors.

Double the government’s target on green hydrogen, with 10 GW of production for use particularly in flexible power generation, storage, and industries like green steel.

Stevo, you're good with numbers. The above seems expensive. Any guesses?

"A key industry of the future is floating offshore wind. But just get this: under the Tories our largest floating wind farm wasn’t built in Britain. It was built in Spain, assembled in the Netherlands and then was towed into place off the Scottish coast. I say: not under Labour. GB Energy will invest in floating wind so Britain can lead the world."

Ed Miliband at Labour Party Conference October 9 2023

and a few days later in the New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/sustainability/2023/10/labour-private-sector-net-zero

"The speech by Ed Miliband, the shadow energy security and net zero secretary, name-checks Orsted as a model of best practice – the renewables giant’s shares are 50.1 per cent government-held and 49.9 per cent private. Labour says it will “unlock £200bn of private investment” with its clean grid plans, opening up bottlenecks, speeding up grid connections that are currently delayed by up to fifteen years. The new transmission infrastructure required will necessitate a revolution in planning regulations, ignoring local opposition to hundreds of miles of cables and pylons running through England’s green and pleasant land.

Now that's not a combination you'd ever expect - Miliband and Statesman.

Thanks for the reminder KO. We have two major hurdles. Political; Labour - where unless they relent the costs will be prohibitive for development and Tories for the panic driven EPL. Then the NSTA and whatever they put in front of us. Everything else flows from there, including finance. We'll certainly be importing O&G for many decades.

Hi L7 - arguably things are moving more in our favour recently but Bressay will have formidable resistance. I think my contempt for Miliband is pretty obvious. What doesn't suit he invents or dissembles. In today's Times on the £28bn - "Labour has been under growing pressure amid claims that the shadow cabinet is divided over the policy to spend such a large sum on green investment in an effort to encourage the private sector to spend more. In recent weeks Rachel reeves, the shadow chancellor, has refused to use the numbers in interviews, and other ministers have sought to back away from the specifics."

Things will change when reality bites and Labour are in power. I'd feel a lot happier if Miliband was moved or dumped before then. The fact that bigger companies have rejected Bressay does speak volumes but holding licenses are pretty cheap and maybe they are considered closer to lottery tickets. We are staying in the NS because that's what we do with the 'scavenger' model. If things don't change we will be in demand for the final closures until their economic tipping point. Financing of Bressay is moot unless geopolitical economic and security conditions make it expedient to drill.

I'm still a little confused. If the RockRose investment in the EP isn't for Bressay then what is it for - or have I missed something? Do we know for sure that its next port of call is as an FPSO on Bressay? The £11.25 may never be paid by RockRose if the development doesn't proceed. I suppose the answer is more prosaic. To move the Bressay project forward they have to present a workable plan to the NSTA and that includes the EP. If it doesn't progress the EP will still have some value (could even appreciate - whose to say?).

L7 19:31 "O&G developments, including the award of new licences, will be subject to tough, perhaps tougher, environmental considerations, probably the toughest in the world, but they will be permitted. That will be the sell to the ‘progressives’."

This worries me. In the Sunday Times Magazine 28 Jan there were 6 pages of humanising Ed Miliaband the 'paper bag' of the Labour Party (I'm neutral here because Grant Shapps is no different). This is the bit that worries me:

"Supporters say it is this strategic thinking that shows Miliband is far from a naive idealist. "In no way is Ed a hairshirt activist," one shadow minister says. "He is a politician at heart. He has a bold vision but is pragmatic about how you achieve theses things. He knows we have to take the people with us or we won't get there."

Miliband will have to use this political skill to sell Labour's pledge to end O&G exploration in the NS - which has attracted fury from the GMB union. But Joss Garman, a former Labour staffer who during Miliband's time in government was a political director of Greenpeace, points out that he has shown this pragmatism before. In 2008 he was under intense pressure to stop a new wave of coal-powered power stations being built, but faced opposition within the cabinet and from unions. "He didn't just ban them," Garman says. "He said you can build them but only if you reduce emissions. He called the industry's bluff [the claim that it could economically capture and store itsemissions]. He balanced the political considerations and worked out how far he could go without overreaching.

This is my fear. He will repeat his success (although the Chinese might disagree - they've done bloody well out of coal since) and put the ball back in the O&G court. A bit like saying "you can carry on making omelettes but NO more breaking eggs." CCS is expensive and nowhere near ready. Offshore wind cost is prohibitive and floating even more so. His intention is to destroy the UK O&G industry. An ideolog and evangelist to the end.

Is this the conversation you're referring to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3D-SksBHhY (listen from 08:50)

"Just transition" - grab the high ground. We're just - you're unjust. Lots of posturing.

Not sure what to think. The SNP seem intransigent and actually sound like an opposition party. They are relying on 'targets' and when missed it is someone else's fault. They live in a different world to the man in the street. I think the number of video views (low) are telling as are the comments. I realise more may have viewed it live but as I said earlier - younger people (many of whom are voters) don't watch TV. The comments appear to be from SNP supporters and indicates to me that they may be of the 'gammon' variety. I am in the right demographic to be gammon but it really doesn't help to have opinions set in stone; the world doesn't stand still. Labour tactfully/tactically avoided attending.

I was impressed by Martin Geissler the presenter's questioning. We need him down here. He's my kind of Scotsman.

Hi Mansardman - are you a Jock? Might explain the occasional aggression (I mean that in a friendly way) - "it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine" - P.G. Wodehouse. I like the Jocks and am still friendly with several including a guy I met playing against RBS (they were infamous in the London Banks League and always top of the charts in sending offs).

I was out last night for a talk at the Frontline Club where the headliner was a late cancellation. Max Foster from CNN was absent, instead of being there he was outside Buckingham Palace pretending he knew King Charles and was knowledgeable about cancer. It shows the way the news cycle works and a breaking story always takes precedence.

However what followed blew me away. There was a QR code on a stage screen. Those clever enough to understand how these work had already done an immediate online survey. The presenter pooh-poohed the King Charles story as old fashioned journalism reporting and would be duplicated in every news agency. Flick from BBC, ITV, CNN, Sky etc.. and they're all the same and anyway younger people don't watch TV. They'd prefer short bite videos on YouTube or Instagram with a hook. TikTok and LinkedIn got a look in too.

There was a clear division between young and old journalists. The evening was supposed to be a discussion about storytelling & TikTok journalism panel discussion and instead became far more interesting and with some scientific (and unexpected) data gathering from the QR code (anonymised but it wanted your email). This is sending me down the track of expecting the unexpected. The world is changing so fast and I wonder if we of the older generation 'get it'. Most of us here still expect and go to the traditional media for our news gathering. It means that in some ways we are travelling blind imo.

hi mansardman - i was being ironic. i hope it will galvanise the o&g companies to take the fight to the government and labour. too much *****footing around and pandering to the likes of juststopoil who are in their death throes.

Good point onedb - I'm happy to be wrong on that one. Makes our price even more of a headscratcher. The assumption seems to be that there is no further production and we run out of oil in (say) 8 years. You have of course revived the question of where EP goes. Are we assuming they're paired?

The only good thing I can take from this is that between the two main parties they have cratered a successful O&G industry for what is an unproven future without fossil fuels. Nations don't vote for parties that promise to make them poorer. I hope the companies have taken the gloves off and started demanding fairer treatment. They [Govts] are scared stiff of upsetting US Tech giants but think bullying small UK companies and robbing their shareholders is somehow acceptable. We don't have the backing of Shell or BP because they've left the NS and even the next biggest (Harbour) have packed their bags in preparation.

Afraid thats incorrect onedb. It was only £11.25m and that was only if it happens. However, these are wet fingers in the air numbers and if Bressay ever gets the green light you have massively undervalued it.

Comedian Bill Bailey believes Jeremy Corbyn's common touch will make him a much better Labour leader than "plastic bag" Ed Miliband.

The Labour supporting funnyman once described Mr Miliband rather unflatteringly as "a plastic bag caught in a tree - no one knows how he got up there and no one can be bothered to get him down."

Just wondering. Does this still apply as we've since banned plastic carrier bags?

"Except, as I say to anyone who tells me they are virtuously going to buy an EV “so you are joining the ranks of the polluters?”. If an EV has to cover around 90k miles before it repays its battery-production debt relative to its petrol/diesel equivalent but can only be effectively used for local journeys then how will it ever cover that mileage?

Not to mention that the battery may have to be replaced shortly after those miles, and the pollution-balancing clock will start all over again…"

One of several delicious comments on EV's here: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/02/05/the-wests-humiliating-electric-car-climbdown-has-begun/#respond

*I'm beginning to be concerned for Elon's billions. Have we reached peak subsidies?

I'm as frustrated as the rest of you. Companies like Facebook & google are doing great. They wouldn't work without electricity. We are seen by some as the New Luddites but there is a big difference. Machinery improved the lot of workers overall because of machinery and cheap energy back in the 19th Century. There isn't cheap energy in the near future and 2050 is a number plucked out of the air.

The world still relies on energy which is still cheap - much cheaper than renewables and more reliable. They kinda get it in the US and it is no different in Russia or China. If we want energy independence through renewables we are going to further exacerbate the lot of the working class and industry because the costs mean that industry can only exist if we protect ourselves from imports and subsidise "essential" industries. Subsidising renewables is senseless. They've had their shot and it is time to throw away the stabilisers.

The only good from all this is that the captains of the O&G industry must be even more engaged and frustrated than us. You can make some excuses about EnQuest with debt and no dividend but how do you explain Harbour and look at Serica today. I don't think either are badly run but I believe we have been even more harsly treated.

Can you imagine the furore if Labour get in and they try to squeeze more pips out of O&G and something goes wrong. We know renewables can't save us and geopolitics are never certain and frankly I don't trust the US to back us to the bitter end; especially if Trump gets in and goes for Fortress America.

One further point. If you read the comments under jso 'X' page you'll see that they are by a large majority abuse and insults towards jso. I can imagine that the juvenile left in charge of updating their 'X' feed is either desperate to try and make them appear relevant by the number of hits to please their backers. Alternately they may just think it amusing to irritate and enrage those against leftie, ideological crusades. I wonder if Emma de Saram still holds these views as I imagine she'll eventually cease being a student and look to the job market. Doesn't look so good if you were a spokesperson for a discredited group that basically existed only for disruption. I imagine the post worked its way back to Mark Austin at Sky. I suspect he'll do nothing but it will reinforce the opinion that jso was a group of mainly innocent and easily duped do-gooders who were used and manipulated by people who fed them pseudo-science and impossible dreams. RIP juststopoil but I imagine they'll be resurrected by another group just as evangelical with about the same chance of a second coming.

If you're a hammer you'll always be looking for a nail.

That wouldn't work Frac. I was talking to my daughter's partner who used to work for the Home Office. They were p*ssed that the Guardian had printed a story with 5 factual errors. They had the weapon of refusing to engage with certain reporters or even the paper itself in the future. They did get one of the reporters to alter a story. No apology in the paper or retraction but they amended the online version. I suppose they'd say they can't call back newspapers so how would a newspaper reader ever know of the abuse. The point is that appesing a newspaper that is set against you isn't worth the effort. The Mail would probably be the same.

However, the propaganda stays out ther because few would even know about the printed lies. Boris got voted in on a litany of exaggeration and lies.

I was browsing 'X' and there was jso with a video dated 10:05 Feb 4. In it their spokesman says in an interview with Sky

"the thing that we need to be doing is renewables that at the last time there was an auction it was shown that they were nine times cheaper than fossil fuels".

Couple of facts. The video is from July 2023 and there has since been an offshore wind auction with higher prices that attracted NO bids. As for the 9X cheaper perhaps Ed Miliband and Keir Starmer could confirm as they did in January 2023 that reneables are indeed 9X cheaper. They're not. In fact if everything is taken into account offshore wind is more expensive (LCOE).

In fact me mentioning them is unnecessary I guess because this shows how desperate they are for attention rather than a coherent argument. Others might think that the video is recent. They are finished as a force and have become an annoying irrelevance.

Monkey wouldn't know who Fortnum & Mason are but we do have a few cultured individuals who set highe standards on this message board.

The other reason I mention them is because it is the first advert on the Guardian page follwed by AJ Bell and City Index. No doubt they're curated towards me but it does expose the total hypocrisy of the Guardian. Not only do they accept income from the very people they often claim are parasitical and a scab on society but have the effrontery to ask me for regular donations. Google and others don't scrounge off me whilst at the same time denouncing as the enemies of society like AJ Bell whose clients which include; shareholders, dividends, profits, and oil companies. They are just another too far leaning left organisation that are closer to juststopoil than the actual workers.

BTW I don't shop at Fortnum & Mason but my butler might.

Hi monkey - you know what they say "you can take the boy out of Essex but you can't take Essex out of the boy". I was born only a few miles from January 24. He's the posh one. I'd move tomorrow but the wife loves the house. Far too big but she's a Miss Havisham and the house is full of stuff. Amazon turn up everyday so it is more of a warehouse.

We're due a break soon, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. We've been losing time for a year straight.

The political manipulation has got out of hand. Biden waits to bomb until the market closes. I think today is the low point when even the Guardian must be embarrassed about the triviality of today's piece. If that is the best that Helena Horton can do she should seriously consider a new career.

Lend us a fiver. I need some firewood - I've burned the sofa.