Thursday 10 May 2012

Energy: Pigs on the Wing, Straws in the Wind

Some interesting developments in the public Energy space in the past few days, starting with the 2 Chris's:

Chris Smith Says Yes To Fracking - and in his latest guise he is chairman of the Environment Agency.  Slowly but surely, shale gas is going mainstream.

Pity he had to spoil it all by saying that the gas should only be used in power plants fitted with Carbon Capture 'n Storage.  What about my gas cooker, eh Smith ?

Chris Huhne says some Moderately Sensible Things.  There's something I never thought I'd say.  Obviously, his comments are topped and tailed by silly greenite sloganeering, because naturally he is making a pitch for leadership of some green-oriented anti-Clegg faction in the LibDems.  But, ho-hum, at least he evidently knows the truth - this, for example: 

"We can hope, of course, that new resources will gradually substitute for old as prices rise. The most promising candidate is shale gas"

A Hilarious Rider to a Massive Wind-farm Approval.  There's no stopping these subsidy-farms, but at least someone has a sense of humour, appending the following condition to the approval: 

"Precautions will also be taken to protect potential coal deposits under the site". 

There's hedging your bets for you ...

ND

8 comments:

Specsaver's client to be said...

I do wish you would stop using this micro font. You are not saving any energy by going up a point or two. I am sure I am not alone in finding it difficult to read. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

The Ranting Penguin [blogger]appears to disagree with you about fracking. Have a peep.

Odin's Raven said...

Here's the Russian view that shale gas is just a financial bubble:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/shale-gas-view-from-russia.html

Anonymous said...

Looking forward to seeing Huhne banged-up, the man's a danger to our kiddie's future.

Nick Drew said...

Mr Client - yeah, sorry about that, Blogger has changed in several ways, not all of them for the better

there used to be an intermediate size available but they seem to have scrapped it. I don't like the spacing of the next one up but then again I don't like to send our readers blind either ... we'll experiment some more

anon @9.17 - hmm, can't really take the Penguin as much of an authority

Mr Raven - wow, that's quite a hive of anti-capitalists there ! where do they come from ?

anon @6.44 - well that's my gut instinct too, but I like to keep an open mind: there is more rejoicing in Heaven etc etc

Timbo614 said...

@Anonymous Specsaver's client to be:
HINT: Ctrl and "+" keys Ctrl and "-" does the opposite.

I've read about the "financial bubble" but more about the "production bubble" i.e. these wells are soon exhausted so like a travelling circus you need to move on to pastures new fairly quickly... So not as cheap or easy to produce as we think. Think (ND)of hundreds of capped off wells that are uglier then windmills and producing nothing :)

Nick Drew said...

Timbo - yes I've read that, too (but a capped-off well is a damn' sight smaller!)

the financial bubble thing looks like the merest crap to me - Gazprom + proxies try all manner of dumb arguments, some of which we've discussed before. Somehow the US shale thing is always about to go away, prices head north etc, but this is from the people who (a) never saw shale coming (b) were saying US gas prices had bottomed 2 years ago, then 1 year ago, then ...

I'm no engineer (you probably guessed) but I do know the history of raw materials extraction, lesson of which being there is always more of the stuff than anyone ever thinks !

CU builds his entire portfolio based on this notion!

if in doubt, go short

Nick Drew said...

except for gold, that is (+: