From actual production to the sovereign wealth fund, comparing the Norwegian approach to developing the hydrocarbon resource to the British is enough to make you cry.
Plus I get to mess around with Thomas Hobbes.*
From The Telegraph, May 6:
Norway reopens North Sea gas fields to power millions of homes
Reactivation project will increase exports to the UK as Ed Miliband refuses to permit new drilling
Norway has confirmed plans to revive three gas fields containing enough supplies to heat millions of homes.
The reactivation project will lead to mothballed North Sea fields being reopened for the first time in three decades, as Norway races to meet growing demand from Germany and the UK.
The new supplies will increase exports to the UK at a time when its own oil and gas output is plummeting by about 15pc a year.
Steinar
Våge, the European president of ConocoPhillips, the hydrocarbon company
behind the reactivation, said the three fields would produce about 19
billion cubic metres of gas. That is equivalent to powering up to three
million homes in the UK.
“By
utilising existing infrastructure, we can produce substantial resources
at low cost, and strengthen gas exports to Europe,” he said.
Norway’s
push to ramp up oil and gas exploration represents a marked difference
to what is happening in the UK, where about 180 of its 280 fields are
set to close by 2030.
In the last 12 months, Britain spent £20bn buying oil and gas from Norway and that reliance is only set to grow further.
Government
modelling shows the UK will need 40 billion cubic metres of gas a year
in 2035, plus 40 million tonnes of oil products.
However, on
current trends the UK’s own gas production will be down from 30 billion
to seven billion cubic metres while oil is set to fall from 35 million
tonnes to just 13 million.
It means the UK will be 80pc dependent on imports – mainly from Norway and the US.
The three gasfields to be reactivated – Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and
Tommeliten Gamma – lie off southern Norway, near the giant Ekofisk
reserve.
They were shut down in 1998, but new technology means the
estimated 19 billion cubic metres of gas they are thought to hold has
now become accessible. They are scheduled to reopen in 2028 and operate
for up to 20 years.
A
Norwegian government spokesman said the country also wanted to unlock
70 “blocks” of seabed in the North Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea
for oil and gas exploration.
Jonas Gahr Støre, the prime minister, said: “Norway’s oil and gas industry is vital to Norway and to Europe.”
Offshore
Energies UK (OEUK), the industry trade body, said the UK’s growing
reliance on Norway was caused by political failures by successive
governments, but could still be reversed.
A spokesman for OEUK
said: “The discrepancy in success in the two different regions of the
North Sea (British and Norwegian) is not dictated by geology.
“It is entirely determined by how respective governments treat oil and gas resources through policy, regulation and taxation.”
It comes as Ed Miliband still refuses to allow new drilling in the North Sea, despite the Iran war strangling global oil and gas supplies.
The
Energy Secretary has argued that new oil and gas “would not take a
penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure and will only accelerate
the worsening climate crisis”.
Claire Coutinho, the Conservative shadow energy secretary, said the UK approach was “madness”.
“Norway just announced 70 new blocks of oil and gas exploration, including in the North Sea,” Ms Coutinho said....
*Out of Civil States, there is alwayes Warre of every one against every one.
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is
called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.
For Warre,
consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract
of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known:
and therefore the notion of Time,
is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of
Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or
two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together: So
the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known
disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the
contrary. All other time is Peace.
The Incommodities of such a War.
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, whereevery man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time,
wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength,
and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition,
there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain:
and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the
commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no
Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force;
no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no
Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and
danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty,
brutish, and short.
—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch XIII, page 62 (1651)
