Rough gas storage site re-opens

[dan_b]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ine-winter

Oh isn't it ironic that they've re-opened the Rough gas storage facility.
Albeit only at 20% capacity. But still - somehow "they" found the money.

[Oldgreybeard]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ine-winter

Oh isn't it ironic that they've re-opened the Rough gas storage facility.
Albeit only at 20% capacity. But still - somehow "they" found the money.

The closure of Rough was always just about profit, IMHO. When gas prices were low there wasn't enough profit from operating Rough to cover the high maintenance costs, so maintenance was deferred until the point where Rough was considered to be unsafe to use any more. Now the gas price has risen Rough is once again likely to be profitable, so worth fixing up to get it working again.

Given that energy supplies are being used as a global weapon by at least one large nation, the real question for society as a whole is whether energy supply reliability should be left in the hands of businesses, who, unsurprisingly, will only invest when they can see a way to make a reasonably quick profit from an investment.

There's a very strong argument that energy supplies are far too critical to life for their security to rest in the hands of multinational companies that may well have no interest in whether any particular country has enough energy available to prevent some of its people from dying.

[Stan]

Here’s the Wiki data for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)

[Oldgreybeard]

What's the betting that the cash that Centrica have squeezed out of the government to persuade them to re-open Rough is far more than the amount they were asking for from government when they closed it.

[Oldgreybeard]

Just seen this statement of the very obvious: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63477214

High UK energy bills blamed on decades of mistakes

For decades now, UK governments have bet on gas to keep the lights on and our homes warm.

Our appetite grew in the 1990s, when a fossil-fuel frenzy in the North Sea set off what was dubbed the "dash for gas". As that dash slowed to a stroll, the UK became a net importer of gas in 2004 and reliant on supplies from friendly countries such as Norway.

Adam Bell, who was head of government energy strategy until last year, said there was an assumption that global supplies of gas "were always going to be deep".

Mr Bell said the government "wasn't thinking of potential downside scenarios", leaving the UK vulnerable to this year's stratospheric rise in gas prices.

Mr Wilson remembered one sobering forecast that "always stuck in my mind", a projection of almost total reliance on gas imports from Russia. Though it never came to pass, becoming heavily dependent on gas "was something I didn't think was a great idea", he said.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, didn't think so either. In 2009, Ofgem produced an unsettling report, which flagged dependency on gas imports as a key risk to energy security.

The founder of Stag Energy, George Grant, had one idea to mitigate this risk. It involved drilling into salt caves beneath the East Irish Sea Basin to build gas storage for a rainy day.

Ministers were initially enthusiastic about the Gateway Project and planning permission was granted in 2008. Then the financial crisis hit, choking off investment.

While Mr Grant kept making the case for Gateway, David Cameron's government felt "there was not a need to intervene to support more gas storage".

Without state support, his project was sunk. Then the government went even further, ruling out any public subsidies for gas storage. It meant no state handouts for Rough, the UK's largest gas storage facility, which was unable to afford engineering upgrades and was mothballed in 2017.

[John_S]

I am surprised that there is barely a mention of Ofgem who must share the responsibility.

For a long time I have felt that our energy policy was ro sell off the privatised companies to foreign buyers and then to have Ofgem screw them on allowed returns so as to give consumers a good deal.

There was never a thought of encouraging investment in infrastructure, especially how to pay the fixed costs of assets only needed occasionally. Eg storage and peaking plant.

[Oldgreybeard]

OFGEM seem to be close to useless at influencing energy policy. They did flag up the seriousness of the problem with gas years ago, but like everything OFGEM suggests or reports on in practice the government just ignores it. I'm not convinced that OFGEM is really fit for purpose, as it has few real powers relating to energy security.

The bottom line is that the large infrastructure projects we need to build to give us energy security just don't hit the payback time and risk criteria that would get them built without government pressure/funding. We need to decide whether we want to keep this risky approach of leaving it to industry to sort out our long term energy needs or whether the government should step in and produce a long term, well supported, plan to both make us less dependent on foreign fuel imports and also decarbonise the grid.

[spread-tee]

Ofgem along with most of the regulators are just semi independent quangos set up so that when the sh1t hits the fan the GOVT of the day can claim "nothing to do with us guvnor" Basically a scam.

Desp