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Times Business today:
Britain has squandered its natural resources wealth in the North Sea and is paying for its failure to plan for the future, according to Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive of Centrica, the owner of British Gas.
Centrica unveiled half-year profits of nearly £1 billion yesterday, only hours after announcing record price rises.
Mr Laidlaw said that other countries, such as Norway, had prepared for depletion of their oil and gas reserves more effectively than Britain. “If you look at where oil prices are, those that have kept their reserves in the ground [are in a better position],” he told The Times. “They have proved to be much more valuable. Unfortunately that [opportunity] is now over.”
He said that Britain’s failure to invest proceeds from the North Sea in a sovereign wealth fund or to construct adequate gas storage capacity to prepare for rising imports all pointed to insufficient forward planning.
No sh*t Sherlock. Thanks, Maggie.
RSS Syndication
6 comments:
The spokesman for British Gas was whinging yesterday that we had less than a third storage capacity than our friends across the channel. So why was it not left in the ground for storage.
The same reason that the Coal mines were closed for short term political expediency- We no longer have secure national power supplies, never mind a U boat campaign lasting years , just turn the tap off- job done.
Mustn't we all accept the government's stance that our energy security will be assured through new nuclear plants? After all, isn't the UK well known for it's world-beating natural stocks of fissionable material? And surely we are all particularly pleased that they are planning to build them in flood-risk areas?
I get very angry about this. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the miners strike, crushing that industry was a political decision, and not one taken in the interests of our national energy security. The British Geological Survey have reported that there are around 200 years worth of on-shore coal reserves suitable for exploitation via underground coal gasification in this country. But no, let's not use our own resources, but rely on Russia et al.
Genius. Pure bloody genius.
Agree on coal.
This is interesting:
“If you look at where oil prices are, those that have kept their reserves in the ground [are in a better position],”
There is a great theory* to explain recent oil price bubble - the principle is, if producers expect prices to rise faster than any other return on a rock sold investment, the economically rational thing to do is to leave it in the ground and sell it in future for a higher price. So booms and busts are self-perpetuating (the recent bubble appears to have burst BTW).
Getting back to coal, isn't that what we did? It's still in the ground and will last us another 200 years, rather than only another 175?
I'm all for a spot of Maggie-bashing every now and then, but aren't you sort of contradicting yourself?
* FT article here.
Jesus wept.
This is why I get so worked up over peak oil and gas. Most of the pain is caused by absolute criminal negligence of successive UK governments.
They were briefed on this in 1999 FFS!!
>:-/
I agree with Mark about reserves. Better that we kept it in the ground, bought "cheaper imports" from Poland - "they make us richer" (c) T Worstall - and now when we have the technology ready, we can exploit the coal without subjecting countless communities to a life of disease, danger and death.
However, though you can say that the crushing of the industry was political, the statement ignores the fact that the industry was being used as a tool by Marxists to overthrow the government of the day. To say Maggie "crushed the miners" is like saying one bloke crushed another's head with a baseball bat, ignoring the fact that the injured was breaking an entry at the time...
The reason why we do not have a sovereign wealth fund is, I suspect, because of our appalling debt. Maggie paid off some of the national debt - there are worse things to do with income.
Rog alludes to the second point that occurs to me.
Regardless of where the gummint gets its income from, it has been spending and wasting far too much.
If they had avoided the cumulative waste over last ten years, we'd easily have paid of the national debt by now, and as Rog says, pay off your debts first, and then either have a SWF, or, even better ... give us some tax cuts! Yippee!
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