DECC Energy Trends - some good news on renewables!

Just to make a change, the latest Energy Trends publication from DECC is not all bad news! The statistical press release actually starts with this graph, showing how renewable energy supply has grown rapidly in the UK recently:

The biggest chunk of this is electricity, so here's how the overall electricity supply looked in the first quarter of 2014, compared to a year ago:

What's interesting to note here is that while renewable energy supply did increase significantly in absolute terms, from 12.7 TWh a year ago to 18.1 TWh this year (43% increase), the reason its share in the chart above increased so dramatically is because the mild winter reduced demand for electricity by 10.4% compared to a year ago. What's really significant here to me is that the cut in demand was reflected in a big reduction in coal and gas burned to generate electricity - which is of course what is supposed to happen as renewable energy generation increases. But it underlines the fact that cutting demand has a huge impact on the proportion of energy we supply from renewable sources.

Although renewable energy capacity had increased over the past year, the other thing that boosted generation was the exceptionally wet and windy weather the UK experienced this winter. Probably not enough of a 'silver lining' to make it worth it for the people who got flooded though... The effect of the weather is shown clearly in the breakdown of renewable energy generation below, with wind and hydro well up on a year ago.


The seasonal trend of more solar power in the summer and more wind/hydro in the winter is clearly shown above as well, which makes a good case for increasing the amount of installed solar PV to even out renewable supply across the year. Though having said that, demand is higher in the winter anyway, so maybe it's not too big a deal.

I'm afraid there's one not so good chart included for electricity though, and that's the one showing our net imports, which are steadily rising:

Clearly this isn't a good thing for energy security, or for the UK balance of payments. Perhaps it's a sign of our steadily ageing generation infrastructure?

Moving on to fossil fuels, there's not a huge amount to report really:

• Coal production was down 27.7% on a year ago.
• Gas production was down 0.2%, but imports were down significantly due to the mild winter
• Oil production was actually up 3.5% for a change!

Of course, we are still a major energy importer - the graph below shows net imports for crude oil (red) and also for petroleum products (blue). We've been a net importer of crude oil for a long time, and the recent rise in production is too small to make a dent in that. But our change to being a net importer of products (diesel, petrol, etc.) is relatively new, and due to reductions in refinery capacity in the UK.

 

So, nice to have some good news to report on the renewables front, even if the overall picture hasn't changed a great deal.

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DECC: UK imported more than half its energy in Q2 2013

The latest DECC Energy Trends was published today, and it's no surprise that the decline in indigenous energy production has continued. The killer statistic is:

In the second quarter of 2013 net import dependency rose to 51.4 per cent, up 9.6 percentage points from the second quarter of 2012.

The chart on page 10 tells the story:

Here's the reasons, all comparing Q2 2013 to Q2 2012...

Coal: Production was down 24.3% on a year ago, and the proportion of our coal that came from imports rose from 81.7% to 93%. These imports came mostly from Russia (nearly half of the total!), USA and Columbia.

Oil: Production was down 13.4% on a year ago, and the proportion of our oil and oil products that came from imports rose from 40.5% to 45.1%. On a related note, the closure of the Coryton refinery resulted in a 5.6% drop in production of fuels from oil.

Gas: Production was down 2.8% on a year ago, and the proportion of our gas that came from imports rose from 43.6% to 52.5%. These imports came mostly from Norway, Qatar and the Netherlands.

Electricity: Production from nuclear power fell 16.5% due to several outages, but wind and PV generation rose by 58.6% (due to increased capacity), and hydro generation rose by 29% (due to higher rainfall). We imported 4.4% of our electricity.

Renewables
The key points here are:

• Share of electricity supply up from 9.7% to 15.5%, due to increased capacity for wind and PV and increased rainfall to power hydro stations. There was also more generation from power stations converted to biomass, although co-firing with coal has reduced.
• There's now 1,918 MW of capacity on a feed-in-tariff, 127 MW of which joined during Q2 2013.
• Total renewable capacity in the UK was 19.5 GW, compared to 14.2 GW a year ago.

Large Combustion Plant Directive
There's a helpful table (page 72) that shows how many of the coal power stations that were running over winter 2012/13 won't be running this winter. It's for reasons like this that Ed Miliband's promise to freeze energy prices seems a bit foolhardy.

The status of the plants that opted out is given in another table:

This shows that there's 5,050 MW of coal plant that ran last winter and won't be running this winter, and another 2,268 MW of oil plant that has shut - this didn't run much last winter, but when it did run it was urgently needed... On top of this there's another 1,730 MW of coal plant that is currently open but will close at some point during this winter. DECC also notes that:

From 1st January 2016 the remaining large combustion plants will be subject to more stringent emissions controls outlined in the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). Plants that chose to opt-out of this directive will be limited to 17,500 hours between 2016 and 2023.

So there's more shutdowns to come!

Mike

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North Sea faces record fall in oil and gas production

According to a story in The Telegraph today, this year could see a record fall in oil and gas production for the UK:

North Sea oil and gas production could decline by as much as 22pc this year - the biggest annual slump on record – as maintenance on ageing infrastructure hits operations, the industry body has warned. Oil & Gas UK said it now expected average output to fall to between 1.2m and 1.4m barrels of oil and gas per day (boepd) this year, down from 1.54m boepd in 2012.
Full story

The decline has been in the region of 10% a year for some time now anyway, but some major technical issues in the past year have pushed production down faster than has been typical. In some ways this isn't all bad - it means that oil and gas is still there to use later on, when prices are higher. But there's always the risk that it's not worth repairing failing machinery if there's not much left to be extracted from a particular field, leaving it locked underground for good. (Of course, from a climate change point of view that's a good thing!)

This trend doesn't fully show up in the latest DECC Energy Trends, as it only covered up to Q1 2013, but even then oil production was down 15% from a year ago, and gas down 14.5%. It'll be interesting to see what's in the September edition...

On a slightly more positive note, it seems that more attention is being paid to thorium as a nuclear fuel. Obviously nuclear energy of any sort has numerous downsides, but thorium does seem to be be 'less bad' than uranium in several ways, so it'll be interesting to watch for more developments...

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UK Energy Trends: the decline continues

A couple of days ago the latest UK government Energy Trends publication was released by DECC. As is now normal, it does not make cheery reading...

Production

Here's the headline figures for 2012 UK energy, compared to 2011:

• Total energy production down 10.5%
• Oil production down 14.5%
• Gas production down 14%
• Coal production down 10%
• Hydro, wind and solar generation up 21%

So, bad news on fossil fuel production, but at least renewables are growing. But note that even after this growth, renewables only supplied 11% of electricity in 2012, and a much smaller percentage of total energy, so there's still some work to do there!

There are also figures focused on the fourth quarter of 2012, comparing it to Q4 2011. The results there are even worse than for the year as a whole:

• Total energy production down 14%
• Oil production down 20%
• Gas production down 21%
• Coal production down 10%
• Hydro, wind and solar generation up 7.5%

Gas production was much lower due in part to the leak at the Elgin platform, which is now gradually coming back into production, so hopefully the decline through 2013 won't be quite so severe. However, gas demand will be increasing, due to the closure of coal-fired power stations.

Imports

Here's the figures for how much we were importing, given for 2012 as a whole and then for Q4 2012:

• 43% of all energy was imported through 2012, rising to 48.7% in Q4
• About 39% of oil demand was met by imports, falling to 36% in Q4 as refinery demand reduced after the closure of Coryton refinery
• About 47% of gas demand was met by imports, rising to 55% in Q4
• About 70% of coal demand was met by imports, falling to 64% in Q4

Of course, the declines in oil and gas production are not just down to depletion, there have also been various technical problems and accidents, as well as maintenance. But these events are not one-offs, they happen every year as our energy infrastructure ages...

We're also a net importer of petroleum products, such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel, after the Coryton refinery shut last year - so the reduction in oil import dependency was offset by an increase in dependency on imports of the finished products.

Electricity

Looking at electricity in more detail, a few key points are worth noting:

• Coal's share of electricity generation increased from 29.5% in 2011 to 39.3% in 2012, while gas went in the opposite direction, from 39.9% to 27.5%. This was due to price variations and upcoming carbon taxes for burning coal, combined with the remaining hours left to run on coal plants opting out of compliance with the LCPD. As many of these plants are closing during 2012 (some have already closed), the balance may be expected to swing from coal back to gas again in 2013.
• Net imports of electricity doubled from 2011 to 2012, and represented 3.4% of total supply.
• Installation of renewable energy capacity is still going ahead quickly, and new record generation was recorded, but it is still a relatively small proportion of overall energy.

Summary

Well, what can I say? We're producing less, importing more, but only using a little bit less energy. With the various ongoing gas supply problems I've been reporting on this blog, it is imperative that the whole of the UK takes action to reduce energy use, particularly for heating and electricity, before we get to winter 2013/14. The alternative is that we pay more. A lot more.

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UK energy decline continues - DECC Energy Trends Sep 2012

DECC has just published their latest quarterly Energy Trends, and surprise surprise, the UK's energy production is continuing to plummet. The headline figure is that total indigenous energy production has fallen by 10.1%, but this includes nuclear power, which isn't really indigenous as we have to buy uranium for reactors from other countries. So excluding nuclear, the drop is actually 11.4% compared to a year ago.

Here's the breakdown of the overall changes in production from Q2 2011 to Q2 2012:

• Coal: down 2.9%
• Oil: down 12.2%
• Gas: down 12.9%
• Nuclear: down 3.3%
• Renewables: up 6.5%

While it's pleasing to see renewables up 6.5%, we should bear in mind the relative quantities of energy we're talking about... So here's the amounts produced in Q2 2012 in Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent):

• Coal: 3.8 Mtoe
• Oil: 12.9 Mtoe
• Gas: 10.2 Mtoe
• Nuclear: 4.2 Mtoe
• Renewables: 0.43 Mtoe

Still a very long way to go to get off fossil fuels then...

The Energy Trends table 1.3a (page 11) conveniently tells us the total energy import dependency of the UK as well. Here's the results for Q2 over the past 3 years:

• Q2 2010: 26.0% imports
• Q2 2011: 31.8% imports
• Q2 2012: 42.1% imports

Anyone else spot a trend here? 42.1% is a new record level of dependency on imports, and if the trends keep going the same way as in previous years, we'll set some new record imports in the next two quarters as well.

Here's a few graphs from the report for the key energy sources:

 Oil import/export/production

Gas import/export/production

Coal imports/production

 

Fuel used to generate electricity

 Renewable sources of energy

So, with ever lower energy production, and the changes to gas storage I mentioned in my previous post, we may be in for interesting times if this winter is a cold one...

Mike

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Shrinking size of UK oil and gas fields

I just came across this graph on page 110 of the 2012 Digest of UK Energy Statistics (internet content) from DECC, showing the size of new UK oil and gas fields coming into production in the UK over the past 55 years. Speaks for itself really...

Page 2 of the Long Term Trends section of DUKES has this cheery paragraph too:

Trends in the production of primary fuels in the United Kingdom are illustrated in Chart 1.1.2. In 2011, total energy production was 137 million tonnes of oil equivalent, an increase of 24 per cent on production in 1970, but down by a record 13.2 per cent on 2010. Total energy production has fallen in each of the last 12 years since it peaked in 1999. In the last ten years, UK energy production has declined at a rate of 6.8 per cent per year; within this natural gas production has declined at the fastest rate, down 8.1 per cent per year, followed by petroleum down 7.8 per cent, coal down 5.3 per cent with primary electricity down 1.9 per cent per year. Bioenergy and waste has grown by an average 8.5 per cent per year over this same time period, though in 2011 accounted for only 4.2 per cent of the UK’s energy production.

Can't help thinking that the growing energy import bill must be having a growing impact on the economy, but it doesn't seem to make the headlines very often...

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Decline in UK energy production continues: DECC

DECC published the latest instalment of its quarterly Energy Trends yesterday, here's a quick summary of the key figures:

Oil

• Production down 13% on a year ago.
• Imports increased by 21.7% on a year ago.
• Crude oil stocks have been declining gradually over the past few years.
• About 34% of UK oil demand was met by imports over the past 12 months.

Gas

• Gas production was down 14% on a year ago.
• Imports shifted away from LNG and towards pipelines compared to a year ago - this isn't surprising given that Japan has been importing extra LNG due to the shutdown of its nuclear reactors since Fukushima.
• Net imports were down 13% on a year ago, due to milder weather and a significant fall in the use of gas for electricity generation (coal use increased in its place).
• Despite the fall in net imports, the UK still imported 42% of its gas over the past 12 months.

Coal

• Coal production was down 12% on a year ago.
• Coal imports were up 20.8% on a year ago. This was still lower than Q1 2009, but it's worth noting that stocks of coal are much lower now than then, so it seems the imports would have been higher still if not for this.
• Over the past 12 months, about 66% of our coal has been imported.

Nuclear

•  Generation fell 11.6% compared to a year ago.

Renewables

• Generation was up 39% compared to a year ago, though down a bit on the record set in Q4 2011. High rainfall and stronger wind have helped here, as well as increased capacity.
• Renewable share of total electricity was 11.1%, compared to 7.7% a year ago.
• Installed capacity was up 36% on a year ago, to 13GW.

Page 72 also had a really interesting graph, showing industrial energy and fuel prices:

Note the steady run up in prices to the peak in 2008, followed by a dip as recession took hold. However, you can see that since that dip, prices have reached new highs (in £ sterling) for crude oil, fuel oil and coal, while in 2011 electricity and gas are pretty much back where they were in 2008.

I think this is why the economic problems are not going to go away - the high and rising prices make it progressively more difficult for the economy to grow, even without the growing pile of debt and austerity measures to deal with it.

You can download a copy of DECC's latest Energy Trends here.

Mike

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2011: A bad year for UK energy production

DECC has just released it's latest Energy Trends publication, including statistics for 2011 as a whole, as well as for the fourth quarter of that year. It's not looking good....

Here's some lines form their summary page, and comments from me:

Total energy production was a record 13½ per cent lower than in 2010.

Note the word 'record' in there - and that's from DECC, not from me. It's a bit alarming that over a decade after the UK's peak in oil and gas production, that we're hitting new record percentage declines in energy output. Of course, there are other factors as well as the stuff simply running out, but we have to assume they'll come along every year anyway - like the leak at the Elgin platform right now.

Oil production was 17½ per cent lower than in 2010, the lowest level of production since the 1970s and part of a long downward trend.

Another shockingly steep decline in output...

Natural gas production was 21 per cent lower than in 2010. In 2011 gross imports of natural gas were greater than gross production for the first time since 1967, with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) accounting for 47 per cent of gas imports.

Just to underline this, as they don't spell it out very clearly. In 2011 the UK imported more gas than it produced. Half of these imports were LNG, which is traded globally and can easily be diverted to where the price is higher.

Coal production was ½ per cent lower than in 2010. Coal imports were 23 per cent higher.

Nothing new here, continuing the trend of growing imports.

Total primary energy consumption for energy uses fell by 7½ per cent from 2010. When adjusted to take account of weather differences between 2010 and 2011, primary consumption fell by 2 per cent.

We all remember how cold it was in both early and late 2010, so it's not surprising to see a fall in energy consumption in 2011. But after allowing for that, consumption still fell 2%, probably because the economy is still struggling here, and less money means spending less on stuff, including energy.

Low carbon electricity’s share of generation increased from 23 per cent in 2010 to 28½ per cent in 2011, due to higher renewables and nuclear generation. Renewables’ share of generation increased by 2½ percentage points on 2010 to a record 9½ per cent.

The one positive bit I could find in there... It's good to see renewable electricity climbing quickly here, though it's important to note that this includes landfill gas and co-firing with coal. Most of the increase came from wind and hydro though, as it was wetter and windier in 2011 than 2010.

I wonder what 2012 will bring? We already have the Elgin gas leak and RWE and E.On pulling out of new nuclear plants....

Mike

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Record drop in UK energy production in 2011

DECC has just released some preliminary information on UK energy statistics for 2011 (download here). Here's the headlines for you:

• primary energy production fell by a record 14 per cent on a year earlier
• petroleum [crude oil] was down by 17 per cent
• gas production down by 20 per cent
• nuclear output was up 11 per cent, due to increased availability following a number of outages in 2010
• wind output from major power producers was up by 59 per cent on additional capacity and higher wind speeds
• hydro up by 70 per cent following strong rainfall in Northern Scotland
• primary energy consumption was down by 7 per cent, and on a temperature adjusted basis, was down 2 per cent continuing the downward trend of the last five years.

The falling energy use (after temperature adjustment) is not really down to efficiency, though that may play a part, it's down to continuing low economic activity - it's no coincidence the trend's been going on since 2007, when the overhang of debt in the world economy finally started crumbling under the weight of high oil prices. But at least there's some good news on increasing renewable generation from wind and hydro, even if it did only contribute about 9% of electricity in Q3 2011, or about 1.25% of total energy (from here) Actually, the quarterly data for Q3 is more alarming than the year as a whole, so it'll be interesting to see the data for Q4 when it comes out in late March. For example:

• Total energy production was a record 19 per cent lower than in the third quarter of 2010... which resulted in net import dependency of 42 per cent, a record high.
• Oil production fell by 22½ per cent when compared with the third quarter of 2010. This is the largest annual quarterly decrease since quarterly reporting began in 1995, and reflects near record decreases in crude oil production and record decreases in NGL production.
• Natural gas production was 29½ per cent lower than the third quarter of 2010. This is the lowest quarterly production as well as the largest year-on-year quarterly decrease since quarterly reporting began in 1998. Gas imports increased by 33½ per cent, with shipped imports of LNG accounting for nearly half of all imports.
• Coal production in the third quarter of 2011 was 10½ per cent lower than the third quarter of 2010.

Good job we've had a mild winter, or we might have been in a bit of trouble...

Mike

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Why UK oil and gas production will keep falling fast

In this post I'm going to show you a few graphs from a UK government department, and explain what they mean for future UK oil and gas production.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has recently published the 2011 Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), which is a fairly lengthy document. Of particular interest is the 'internet booklet' version, which includes the graphs I'll show you in a moment. A bit of background first...

When an oil or gas field is discovered and developed, production initially rises, then reaches a peak, and finally falls away. The rate at which production falls tends to drop over time, so you end up with a 'long tail' of low production that can carry on for many years - or until the field's owner decides it is no longer generating enough income to be worth maintaining. However, this pattern has changed in the past couple of decades, as explained by this quote from the DUKES internet booklet:

It can be seen from the production chart that during the 2000s the amount of oil produced from older established fields was in general decline. It is also noticeable that the decline in post 1994 developments is greater than in earlier developments. This is because later technology meant crude oil could be extracted at a relatively greater rate leading to a quicker exhaustion of the reserves. In 2010, these newer (post 1994) fields accounted for 69 per cent of the UK’s oil production.

Here's the chart it is referring to, showing oil production, with fields grouped by the year they started production (all charts can be clicked to view a larger version):

The older fields had new technology applied as it became available, maintaining steady but lower production over longer periods of time, but the newer fields have had all the advanced technology applied very quickly (to make money faster), and as a result the production rises quickly, but also falls quickly once peak production is passed. This has allowed the rather small oil fields discovered in the past couple of decades to offset the slow decline from the much larger, older fields, but now that some of them are declining, and declining fast, there is really nowhere left to turn other than importing oil (the UK has been a net importer since 2005). The following chart shows the same data, but as percentage share of total production:

As you can see, the majority of our oil production is now from recently developed smaller fields, which experience shows us will decline quickly - so we've got quite a long way to fall before we bottom out on the 'long tail' of oil production which we can reasonably count on for a longer period.

And just to complete the picture, here's the same graphs for gas fields (bear in mind that in 2010 over 40% of our electricity was generated by burning gas...):

Ever played a game of Snakes and Ladders? I think the UK is half way down a snake...

Mike

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Huge decline in UK oil and gas production in Q1 2011

The latest instalment of DECC's Energy Trends series has just been published, covering Q1 2011. You can download a copy here (1.8MB PDF).

The summary page says it all really, with these bullet points:

• Total energy production was 11 per cent lower than in the first quarter of 2010.
• Oil production was 15½ per cent lower than in the first quarter of 2010, due to maintenance activity and slowdowns.
• Natural gas production was 17½ per cent lower compared with the first quarter of 2010. Net imports of gas increased by ½ per cent. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) accounted for 43½ per cent of gas imports.

If, like me, you prefer to see it represented graphically, you'll be pleased with what I've prepared for you below...

Here's a chart of quarterly oil production in the UK, from the start of 1999 to Q1 2011:

Not looking too promising, is it? To help see the trend, here's a graph showing the % change year-on-year from 2000 to 2011:

As you can see, there's been the odd blip where production has risen, but the last time was in 2007, and the first quarter for this year set a new record for the decline.

Moving on to gas, here's the another production graph, but this time I've added on the amount being imported as well:

 

As you can see, there's a similar trend as for oil, though with greater seasonal fluctuations. I think this is probably because the gas market is more fluid, with pipelines connecting us to Europe, meaning production is often slowed down while prices are low. Here's a percentage change graph again, with the same high fluctuations, and close to a new record on decline:

Just to reiterate the problem we have with gas, here's another graph showing the percentage of UK gas supplied by imports, on a quarterly basis:

As you can see, we imported more than half our gas in the final quarter of 2010, which isn't surprising as it was very cold, but also in the first quarter of 2011 - when it was actually relatively mild!

Many thanks to DECC for providing these figures publicly - shame the government isn't taking the urgent action which the graphs above should prompt them to. It's not just about energy security and keeping the lights on this winter, it's also about whether we can afford the imports. To put it in context, wholesale gas has been trading on the National Grid at about 2p/kWh this summer. The graphs above are in GWh, one of which would cost £20,000 at the same rates.

In the past two quarters we've imported over 367,000 GWh - that's about £7.3 billion worth of gas. So if anyone was still wondering why gas prices are going up,  now you have part of the answer...

It's summer now, but winter is coming - take the time over the coming months to insulate your walls and loft if you've not already done so, and if you want to do even more, take a look at my other blog for some ideas.

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IEA oil release from emergency reserves - start of a slippery slope?

Yesterday the IEA announced it was releasing 60m barrels of oil from its 'emergency' reserves, at a rate of 2m barrels per day. The interesting question is: what is the emergency? OK, Libyan oil is not flowing, but that's been the case for months now. Japan is using extra LNG, though it's not clear if oil use there is higher than before the tsunami, but once again, this is not a recent change.

The only reason that can be seen for releasing this 'emergency' oil is that high prices are choking off the economic recovery in developed countries. But if the high prices are due to restricted supply, then this is just the market doing its work - 'rationing by price'. If we don't like it, we should try physical rationing or other ways to get people to use less oil. If the market is signalling a shortage through rising prices, then doesn't trying to reduce those prices without fixing the underlying problem (excessive oil consumption) just push the problem a month or two further down the road?

Worse still, if we're using 'emergency' reserves when there isn't really an emergency, and if this starts happening more often, what will happen when these reserves are gone?

Of course there's always more going on behind the scenes than we know about in public. Take this news story from last week as an example:

The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be "significant negative economic consequences" to the UK posed by near-term "peak oil" energy shortages.

Ministers were told it was impossible to know exactly when production might fail to meet supply but when it did there could be global consequences, including "civil unrest".

Yet ministers consistently played down the threat with the contemporaneous Wicks review into energy security effectively dismissing peak oil as alarmist and irrelevant.
full story

Basically, some smart, forward-thinking civil servants in DECC were researching peak oil and its impact on the UK in 2007, and in June 2009 a report was prepared, but ministers ignored it. This has only become public now because of Freedom of Information requests... You can download the slides here, but they are pretty in depth (which is good to see). Slide 16 is interesting, as most of the impacts which were researched in 2007 have now happened to one degree or another. So, coming back to the IEA oil release, maybe it ties in well with this stuff from DECC - they are perhaps trying to mitigate some of the immediate impacts of peak oil. Unfortunately this can't go on for much longer, as our emergency reserves are just as finite as the oil under the ground...

Mike

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UK government alarmed about peak oil, but doesn't know what to do

Well, that's the way it looks to me, after reading a story brought to my attention by James from PowerSwitch:

Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is also refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" – the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines – under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".

Experts say they have received a letter from David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the DECC, asking for information and advice on peak oil amid a growing campaign from industrialists such as Sir Richard Branson for the government to put contingency plans in place to deal with any future crisis.

The article, from The Guardian, goes on to remind us that the IEA, which the government regards as the ultimate authority in energy supplies, is itself split over peak oil, with insiders saying that the official projections of oil supply will be impossible to achieve.

But in response to Freedom of Information requests, the government is saying that the need for ministers to have private discussions on sensitive issues is more important than telling us what the government knows, and what it plans to do about it.

My suspicion is that the government has no idea what to do. The impact of peak oil and the measures that will be required to deal with it will immediately lose any government an election, or perhaps even a vote of confidence. Quite how we'll get out of this situation I don't know. The only thing that's certain is that the clock is ticking, and if nothing is done then the scenarios in Alex Scarrow's novels become ever more likely....

Mike

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