The Oil Drum

In his second blog entry, Andris Piebalgs moves the focus to European energy security. A few choice excerpts for those who want to have a more spontaneous debate:

Europe is currently importing half of their energy needs, and according to most of the studies, our dependency may grow to 70%. We are running out of fossil fuels and our energy needs grow. This makes Europe terribly vulnerable. As Commissioner responsible for security of supply I often wondered, where are we going to get all that energy from? (my emphasis)

The EU is already a leader in renewable energy sources and we have taken a commitment to go further with a mandatory target of 20% of our final consumption by 2020......

OECD European gas production looks set to peak in 2008. After that, falling production combined with rising demand will see OECD European gas imports wanting to rise from current 197 BCM per annum to 442 BCM per annum by 2020. Where will this gas come from and how will rising European imports affect N America and the rest of the world?

Figure 1 OECD Europe gas production and conceptual forecast. Click all charts to enlarge

This is a guest post by Mike Pepler. Mike lives in Rye, UK, and works from home for the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy (www.ashdenawards.org). He is also one of the founding members of PowerSwitch (www.powerswitch.org.uk), and together with his wife Tracy manages eight acres of coppice woodland near Rye.

On 25th September 2007, the BIEE, the UKERC and the Energy Institute held a seminar in London where they invited academics to critique the 2007 Energy White Paper.

Background

In 2003 the UK government released the Energy White Paper 2003: Our Energy Future - Creating a Low Carbon Economy. As we all know, events in the energy world have moved fast since 2003, and faced by falling gas supplies from the North Sea and ageing nuclear power stations, the government launched another energy consultation in 2006, details of which are available online here. The result was another Energy White Paper, published in May 2007, this time with the subtitle Meeting the Energy Challenge. It seems to me that the change in the energy world over the intervening years can be seen from the change in the tone of the titles from 2003 to 2007!

The purpose of the seminar was to bring together a range of academics to give a critique of the Energy White Paper – and they certainly were critical! So, without further ado, here are the key points form the speakers, with comments from me in italics where appropriate.

The slides are available on the BIEE website here: www.biee.org/downloads.php

Major Loss Of Gas Reserves Seen If ExxonMobil Scraps Pipeline

ExxonMobil's possible move to scrap natural gas pipelines in Alaska and Canada could amount to the equivalent of losing all the country's production in the Gulf of Mexico, an energy analyst said Thursday.

"It's the biggest energy story of the year," said Andrew Weissman of FTI Consulting.

Although natural gas and gasoline prices fell on Thursday following a rise in supply, Weissman said the market has yet to weigh the implications of ExxonMobil's (XOM) decision to possibly back away from building the Mackenzie Valley pipeline in Canada.

ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson told reporters after the company's annual meeting Wednesday that the $16.2 billion price tag for the delayed Mackenzie Valley pipeline is too expensive without more government subsidies.

"We are now in a situation where it's not economic at current costs," Tillerson said in an article published by The Globe and Mail. "It may just be that the project is going to have to wait for a different cost environment."

Gordon Laxer, Professor of political economy at the University of Alberta and Director of the Parklands Institute, created a political storm with his testimony before the International Trade Committee on Thursday. He was conducting a presentation on the energy and climate change implications of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), an agreement on greater integration between Canada, the US and Mexico. Professor Laxer pointed out that the deal, which refers to North American "energy security" as a priority, commits Canada to maintaining energy exports to the US, in the absence of a national plan or strategic reserve to protect its own security of supply.

On 5 March 2007 David Miliband MP delivered a lecture titled "The transition economy: a future beyond oil?" Full text available here. The 18MB MP3 audio file is available here.

Nice title, so who is he? Miliband is Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, a senior cabinet position in the Blair Government. He became an MP for Labour in 2001 and was appointed to the cabinet in 2005. At just 41 he’s regarded as young for his position and there has even been press speculation he might challenge Gordon Brown for leadership in the summer when Blair steps down.

Britain's gas dependency in focus at IEA

Britain risks becoming too dependent on natural gas unless it builds more nuclear power stations, boosts renewable resources and improves energy efficiency, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

"We think it is a model for other IEA countries... However, there is room for improvement, particularly in the area of gas dependence," Mandil told reporters in London. "The UK government needs to monitor this situation and should keep all options open for potential developers of power stations to use other fuels."

The main threat to Britain, the IEA report on UK energy policy released on Thursday says, is that new investment is focussing on gas-fired power generation at a time when Britain's own production is falling rapidly.