Apart from this being the first anniversary of George W Bush winning the White House for a second term this is also the 30th anniversary of the day that the Queen turned on the flow of oil in a vast extravaganza in Aberdeen. Wilson was PM and talked of a nation that generated its own wealth instead of relying on others.
Whatever the discussion about whether our crude oil is any good or not it is interesting that oil alone is the sole remaining natural resource (despite gas which we are starting to lose) for power.
We have renewable energies but as yet their impact on power generation is still at an early stage.
In fact I thought oil was on the decline but I gather there have been two major finds over the last few years; Buzzard oilfield (400m barrels) and the Brenda oilfield (150m Barrels).
This blog today is not the place to think more about the Nuclear energy but I did find it fascinating that yesterday a leading environmental (green) scientist, James Lovelock, came out and claimed that maybe Nuclear is a worthwhile environmental method of energy production if it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions in power generation. You need to go to the Today programme website to hear it - broadcast 3.11.05 or go to the link above to see an earlier publication he has written. The world is changing and I think we are beginning to change with it.
2 comments:
Actually Kevin is not presenting a complete picture when he says Oil is our sole remaining natural resource for power.
On the contray we have hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Coal still beneath our feet. The cheap stuff has all been taken but Liek with oil - as the price rises it becomes economically viable to mine it once again. Investing in "Clean Coal" technology where teh emmissions are "scrubbed" and teh CO2 sequestered in redundant oil fields not only ups the flow of oil* by increasing teh pressur ein those fields - it also proviodes us witah home grown strategic energy reserve that we do not have to import from the middle east or Russia.
Even that is not the end of the story because our abandoned coal field also harbour something called "Coal Bed Gas" which is exactly teh same as teh stuff that shoots out of your hob at home - Methane. There ar ehuge projcts in the US to drill and extract this "Coal bed gas" and estimates suggest we have 60 years worth of this gas sitting below us.
* By The way - Crude oil is far too precious to burn for heat. We need oil for all the myriad plastics and medicines and cleaning products etc where it actually creates more value. Burning it really is like burning money.
I accept what you say. I think what I was alluding to was that oil is one of the last remaining natural resopurces that we are utilising.
My understanding on the coal issue is that it is economically unviable to extract coal in this country because of the high wage costs. Not to say you cannot do it but the consumer would need to be prepared to pay siginifcantly more than they do now.
Post a Comment