Fracking has developed a Not in my back yard syndrome. France has even banned it outright...
Currently on hold in the UK I think while they work out the best way to handle the protests although there is nothing like a little cold and dark when the power/gas goes off to concentrate the mind.
Also worth noting fracking is a very expensive process. It is only the rise in the price of gas over the last few years which has made it profitable at all to use this procedure. On that basis even if they manage to overcome all the envrionmental concerns don't expect the price of gas to drop, the opposite will be true.
As for the bounty from the North Sea..... Pulling back public spending to reduce the deficit is also a part of this. Tax revenues have been falling off a cliff as the supplies brought up deplete..
Other interesting points to note....
Interesting points to note:
It takes the equivalent of 2 days whole consumption at current levels just to PRIME the network. (Fill all the pipes)
They've included Norway imports in with the UK production to hide the fact that production is falling.
We now have more LNG stock than medium-term natural gas stock.
Stocks in February got as low as sub 30%
We don't have separate strategic reserves like the US does. The stock lists ARE our reserves.
We export gas cheaply during the summer to France who buy it, store it and sell it back to us at a massive profit in the winter. This is because old people refuse to allow gas storage sites to be built near to their houses.
Because gas is so expensive in winter, we give old people free money so they can afford gas.
In the event of Gas shortages, heavy commercial gas users will have their gas cut off first. They get a discount for agreeing to this. It has never happened, however if it did for more than a few hours most of the factories involved would close forever as the cool-down would result in so much damage it would not be viable to restart them.
If gas was still short, electrical generation using gas would be stopped. This would cause immediate blackouts.
If gas supplies were ever cut to a large built up residential area, even for an hour, it would take months or years to get everyone reconnected. If this happened to a large city such as Leeds or Birmingham it could take as much as a decade.
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