The Oil Drum

28 comments on The problems of natural gas supply

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Chris Vernon on November 15, 2005 - 2:51am

The peak oil movement doesn't talk about gas nearly enough in my opinion. I think gas shortages will be more serious, sooner for many countries before oil. The UK is situation is a disaster waiting to happen. Whilst global peak oil may be sooner than global peak gas, that misses the point. Oil can be transported around the world with ease whereas gas can't. This will lead to gas shortages long before the actual global extraction rate peak.

UK gas extraction to Q2-2005:
UK Gas
link

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Nick Rouse on November 15, 2005 - 8:05am

If you think this is worrying look at table ET1.1 at the UK Department of Trade and Industry statistics. There they have figures for July and August 2005. At 1 million tonne oil equivalent = 11.63 TWh, the figures are:-
July 71.1 TWh
August 54.7 TWh
This means production in August 2005 was 23% down on August 2004. The UK has no facilities to import liquid natural gas and only a small pipeline across the English Channel to mainland Europe that is already working at full capacity.

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Chris Vernon on November 16, 2005 - 6:38pm

Thanks Nick! Here's an updated graph:

Link to blog comments.

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AlexC on November 15, 2005 - 8:43am

If the predictions about this winter come to pass we could be looking at one of the opening shots of a more sustained energy crisis.

One of the areas i find most worrying is when you look into lead times for the UK expanding import capacity. You cant help but wonder how, even if we get through this winter we would be able to get through 2006 with depletion continuing at such a rate. With most new projects only coming online in 2007/2008 we could face quite a crunch period.

clv101 makes an excellent point about the transport issues with natural gas. I see gas becoming a bigger problem for the US and Canada (due to legal requirements to export to the US) far sooner than oil does. The main reason being the buying power the US commands on the world market for oil cannot be applied to gas.

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Leanan on November 15, 2005 - 11:49am

Exactly right. Oil is easily shipped, and we've benefitted from that, as poorer countries are priced out of the market. We're paying more, but we're not suffering any real shortages.

Natural gas is a whole different ball of wax. It's not easily shipped. And we've become very dependent on it. Partly because environmental regulations encourage its use, partly because the oil crisis of the '70s discouraged the use of oil to generate electricity, partly because it has been so cheap and so plentiful for so long.

We've come close to running out of natural gas before. That is, using so much that the pressure drops to null, meaning no gas flows through the pipeline. And that was with relatively mild summers and winters. In the winter of 2004, areas in the northeast were warned that rolling blackouts might be necessary - during one of the bitterest cold snaps of the year. (Of course. Just as energy crisis hit on hot days in summer, they're more likely on cold days in winter.)

We've been lucky the past four or five years. Our luck may have run out this year. A hot summer plus those hurricanes...even if the winter isn't too bad, we could be in trouble this year.