From the day Burnham took office, the green-left has been howling at him not to approve Jackdaw & Rosebank. This raucous attempt at intimidation possibly peaked with a piece in the Graun analysed at C@W here, when more than 20 distinct (and awfully shrill) "arguments" were made, one after the other - and hilarious reading they still make. It was always pretty obvious they did protest too much which, as regards Jackdaw at least, they probably now recognise themselves.
And now he's gone and "Failed His First Big Test" or, as we would put it, "Passed". Time will tell if the threatened back-bench revolt / party split / defections to the Greens will result. I'm guessing not, but will be taking a forensic interest in how things pan out in the public debate. (If anyone spots a really juicy piece in an obscure journal etc, do let us know.)
As we said all along, Jackdaw (gas) was always the easier decision to make and to sell. You don't need to have a degree in Party Management to see the logic in running it first, in order to see how matters pan out from here (- not to mention in order to get the gas ashore this winter!) If it turns out to have burned a bunch of political capital, Rosebank (oil) might have to wait. If, by contrast, it's a walk in the park, Rosebank will follow, as night follows day. Fahnbulleh seems to be briefing that she's agin'; but let's see. That might just be to get the protestors off her back for now. It's Burnham's call anyway, and he & Healey might want the exports / jobs / tax revenues / preservation of international reputation.
Not all of the authors of the original 20+ Shrill Arguments will have been cowed by Jackdaw: indeed some of them - including Ed "Climate Vandalism" Miliband himself - had already accepted by then that Jackdaw might be quite likely to fly. So for Round-2-Rosebank we may expect another round of high-pitch whining and threatening in the days and weeks to come. Part of our forensic analysis of this political fallout will be to note exactly who considers it worth prolonging the fight - and how much of their own political capital they are willing to expend in doing so.
That won't include many Labour backbenchers, I'm guessing: so no big backbench revolt. Of course, one of the 20+ was the threat of defections to the Greens, and loss of votes in the same direction: and for sure, a lot of would-be ambitious MPs are now simply concerned to save their seats. It helps greatly that "Polanski" is staggering on the ropes, of course: and that the red entryists have systematically made the Green party look anything but cosy & welcoming.
How are the popcorn reserves holding up?
ND
One of the great disappointments I had in life was that a planned helicopter flight out to one of the North Sea platforms was cancelled. The company decided it was too risky for non-essential personnel. I replied "Let our wives worry about that" but The Co. found that unpersuasive.
ReplyDeleteIn that regard I was very fortunate because, prior to the Nov 1990 Cullen Enquiry report (Piper Alpha) after which the shutters came down, I went on a large number of helicopter trips offshore (non-essential: I am not an engineer).
ReplyDeleteQuite an experience. As a visitor I was never scheduled to spend the night, but on one occasion I had to (on a mess room sofa - it was a very small platform) because weather precluded the intended return flight. Happy days.
PS, if I'd come a cropper after boarding the helicopter it was automatic 6x salary payout for Mrs D, on top of any insurance ...
ReplyDeleteThursdays and Fridays usually slow news days. Time to let Jackdaw settle in the nest and measure the 'stink', more a vague whiff to normal people. A bit of a no-brainer Jackdaw but politicians....
ReplyDeleteWhat will make Rosebank viable - moneywise and political flak wise? A bit of time, a bit more trouble out east.
All seems a tiresome waste of time and money, but the popcorn is holding up.
I see the G are saying that Rosebank is a no (i.e. we'll approve later).
ReplyDeleteI actually heard on BBC News a day or two back an interview with a Times journalist criticising the Boriswave of 2022-3. Among her points
a) Boris handed out more than two million visas in two years
b) they were for relatively low wage jobs (as low as £21k)
c) and for say care home workers more people came in as dependents than actual workers
d) these people will all be entitled to apply for citizenship in the next two years under current rules.
e) which will make a huge hole in public finances as these two million are likely to be lifelong net tax recipients, not contributors.
f) therefore HMG should amend the rules to remove their entitlements to benefits if not also their entitlement to citizenship
The Times is generally on the side of the Establishment, so this is a much needed gleam in a sombre landscape.
In all the debate, why are the non-fuel aspects never brought up?
ReplyDeleteFrom gas, to oil, even to coal dust, much of our day-to-day stuff id from petrochemical or petrochemical-adjacent sources.
Plastic buttons are not organically grown next to spaghetti trees, the plastic wrap on the sandwich you're munching on way to the studio was not was some weird bark in the Congo three weeks ago, and the food in it was likely dependant on fertilisers with more than a passing knowledge of oil or gas.
You could skewer any Green wearing anything other than a hemp poncho with that kind of information.
A perfectly valid point, but only roughly 10–15% overall of natural gas (on an energy-equivalent basis, around 12%), with oil at about 14–16% and natural gas at about 5–8%, is used as a feedstock.
DeleteThis covers non-energy uses as raw-material inputs for chemicals, plastics, fertilisers, synthetic fibres, solvents, asphalt/bitumen, lubricants, and similar products, as distinct from combustion for energy (transport fuels, heating, power generation, etc.).
Given economically extractable hydrocarbons are finite, it makes far more sense to conserve these for the above purposes — where perfectly viable alternatives are already available — than to go squandering them on passenger car transport, low grade heat and powerburn (etc.). Even the UKCS’ limited geology has enough for decades of self sufficiency in the feedstock demand sector, once we’ve managed to wean ourselves off gas and oil in areas where they are not essential.
Of course, some would happily run down the UKCS in a decade or two by carrying on like we’ve always done, just ‘cos they don’t like wind turbines… go figure… (I wouldn’t mind, energy policy is already locked in to migrate away from fossil fuels, so what they think doesn’t matter anymore anyway, but the sad part is, they style themselves as being “the responsible ones”)
Errata: I made a typo in the first paragraph, which should have read “Roughly 10–15% overall (on an energy-equivalent basis, around 12%) of natural gas and oil together, with oil at about 14–16% and natural gas at about 5–8%.
DeleteI fat fingered 'is' as 'id', but I have a blocked nose, so onomatopoeically correct at least.
ReplyDelete'Sources say' that the decision to get Rosebank up and running will be made after the disaster of a budget that Healey and Burnham have cobbled together.
ReplyDeleteThe decision will be 'Start the b*****d'.
Right now, you have to think it's all panning out pretty much as anyone would have anticipated: feeble attempts at sound and fury and "hell no, not Rosebank" from the predictable quarters, in the hope this scares Burnham out of his obvious pragmatic intentions
ReplyDeleteI get the impression they ain't so confident about it, though (... he wouldn't ... would he..?). In Burnham's very great favour: they all recognise he's the bloke who breezed in and said "Triple Lock? Pah - so what?", and everyone said, wow, you know, he is just the man to break it. You can't hail someone as being brave enough to talk rejoining EU, and then imagine he won't put Fahnbulleh in her place. What do they imagine "reindustrialisation" means?
This whole thing is the most glorious set-piece political PR strategy challenge. High on my list of options for timing would be Budget Day itself.
"High on my list of options for timing would be Budget Day itself." My thought too. But would the idea be to bury it under the bad headlines the budget will get, or to promote it as the government's one pro-growth policy?
DeleteLet's assume there are a couple of really attractive baubles for the left in the Budget (including a cunning "green" wheeze of some sort). The package becomes: Just Rejoice! Listen to those cheers - they are the massed choirs of the unions, the North of England & Scotland, & the financial community. And BTW, you can only have these baubles because we are reindustrialising, and here it comes. Now piss off back to your bedsits. Next!
ReplyDelete@Clive - my question wasn't in defence of using hydrocarbons for fuel, although I believe we'll be doing so for a while yet as the grid and the number of grid scale batteries needed will be both costly and come with its own environmental issues that'll come to the fore.
ReplyDeleteIt's more about defusing the arguments for drilling, the Greens and Lib Dems are very adept at making sad eyes, rather less at tackling reality
CH
Oh yes, absolutely.
DeleteThe “deep green” (aka Longhouse deindustrialising, you-can’t-have-anything-nice, the world will spontaneously combust by 2030/2040-2050-let’s-keep-the-narrative-the-same-but-just-move-the-timeframe) loons are single-handedly the most destructive to their cause activists going right now.
And speaking of renewables, we've had solar now for 12 months. Installation cost just over 10k, and between lower bills and income from selling excess energy, we've saved around 3k this year. If that continues it'll have paid for itself in under four years.
ReplyDeleteWe have some natural benefits that not everyone will have - south facing, large roof, elevated position both geographically and locally - but I'd recommend them.
A solid fuel fire does reduce our gas usage this time of year, and now we've had air con installed we can use that on cold but sunny days too for zero cost.
Next step is getting a T junction installed so the battery kicks in during blackouts, and maybe a generator added to the mix.
CH
What was the size of the HMG subsidy? (As I gather that might disappear tomorrow - it's difficult politically to justify subsidies to the 4+ bedroom 3 car households "but Freya is just learning to drive!" )
Delete@anon 3:38 - no subsidy in the docs, although we got 16p a unit selling coat, down to 13p now.
ReplyDeleteAnd we've just the one car, and no Freya. And having dragged myself up from a rough area, I'm apologising to no one for enjoying the good things as I move through middle age
CH
It wasn't a personal dig. Graun:
Delete"The scheme is not expected to be scrapped altogether, but sources say hundreds of millions of pounds will be cut from its £2.7bn five-year budget because Treasury officials consider it a subsidy used mainly by middle-class households."
They'll apparently keep the subsidy for oil-only homes, but I'm fairly sure it would entail scrapping our 1 year old oil boiler, which would be foolish. We have enough room for ground source heating though, and a stream runs through the garden which naturally has a much bigger winter flow.
Delete@ Anonymous
DeleteThere’s a tonne of hidden subsidies for fossil fuels. Some include:
• Capacity Market: ~£1–1.3 billion per year. This pays generators (and some other capacity) for availability rather than generation and almost all goes to combustion plant
• Red diesel / rebated fuels and related schemes: £0.85–1 billion.
• Aviation fuel duty rebate: Full exemption for all domestically loadings is £360 million
And that’s before you get to capital allowances, around £3 billion a year for fossil fuels which I’m only not allocating as an overt subsidy because renewables have similar — which still doesn’t undermine the argument about how much of a bung energy gets as a whole and fossil fuels don’t turn their noses up at it and squeal about how they are so much “cheaper” than the new energy alternatives. I won’t even start about other begging bowls which get put out, like the annual outing for Centrica and the Rough storage recommissioning.
Clive, your defining some of those as "fossil fuel subsidies" shouldn't go uncontested. The red diesel is a farming subsidy: nobody producing / selling diesel needs a bung in order to get them to do so. The Capacity Market is a government tender for reliable generating capacity on demand. It's a cost of renewables. Capacity can be viewed as a commodity like anything else, and the renewables-ridden grid has a demand for it, on a fairly exacting basis.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about aviation.
Capital allowances are a feature of the tax system in many spheres, as you indicate. Profitable oil & gas production gets hammered by the tax system overall. It's hardly in the same category as the pure cash hand-outs renewables receive.
I've banged on about Centrica / Rough here periodically for years, as this tag will reveal. http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/search/label/Centrica
Sadly, when subsidies become the order of the day, all too many businessmen (including those brought up to stand on their own two feet) shrug their shoulders and head for the trough.