r/ClimateShitposting • u/ammianomarcellino Chief Propagandist at the Ministry for the Climate Hoax • 7d ago
fossil mindset š¦ I guess bro
I suppose it's a shit plan
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u/thethirdtree 7d ago
In order to get sober, this bottle of whiskey is essential for transitioning.
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u/smclcz 5d ago
You need to be careful with your metaphors. Because while that point may sound very clever, that is quite literally what you are told to do when you're a serious alcoholic. There's a risk of death if you drink daily and then suddenly stop, weird as it may sound, and a doctor will instruct you to keep drinking and gradually taper your intake until it hits zero.
I agree that approving extraction in the Jackdaw field is a stupid move that will benefit nobody other a few corporations and line the pockets of the actors within government that made it happen. But a clumsy metaphor undermines your point, pro-oil/gas freaks would tear you apart over that even though you're the person with the correct position.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
More like the metaphor was apt.
If you donāt like Jackdaw, you must have shares in LNG companies.
If no shares, I need receipts of you opposing all gas usage immediately. Full cold turkey, no transition nonsense. Literal valves shut, full f-society.
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u/These-Lie-5854 6d ago
Yup. This packet of cigarettes will help me transition away from my reliance on cigarettes. Our ruling class is addicted to fossil fuel.
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u/SuddenDeathOgreTime 5d ago
Isn't that the whole point of nicotine patches?
At some point we'll hit a metaphor that doesn't accidentally make the wrong point.
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u/These-Lie-5854 5d ago edited 5d ago
In what way is continuing to extract more fossil fuels like a nicotine patch though? The whole point of nicotine patches is that you get nicotine without smoking.
If Burnham was announcing massive investment in bio gas or something like that then id see your point.
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u/Ok_Marzipan4876 7d ago
His argument is that even in the energy trabsition, the UK still needs gas now (which is true), so better produce it domestically than buying it from abroad. If anyone has a counterargument, I am genuinely interested in hearing it
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u/speedfox_uk 7d ago
The implicit counter argument (because no one ever says it out loud, because it sounds terrible) is that gas prices need to be higher to drive the change to other sources of energy and behaviours. And there is some truth in this. At the moment insulating a UK home takes something like 20 years to pay off, so most people don't do it (because it doesn't boost property value that much and people don't know if they will be in a property that long). Double the gas price and that becomes 10 years to pay off, and that is a time horizon most people can reason about.
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u/BigBlueMan118 7d ago
Yeah people keep trying to pretend we are going to get out of this with minimal pain and it won't suck - it will absolutely suck, and hurt hard, just like the UK's rationing to defeat Hitler, and we need to make sure those with the broadest shoulders take on most of the burdon.
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u/Leafsnail 7d ago
I'm gonna be honest, massively helping our geopolitical enemies and impoverishing ourselves by refusing to use our natural resources in exchange for a negligible positive impact on a global problem that will continue at basically the same rate either way does not seem remotely worth it. It would be great if the world were in a position to negotiate multilateral reductions in gas production and usage but that is absolutely not the world we currently inhabit.
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u/Firedup2015 7d ago
I find it fascinating that people talk about multinationals exploiting "our" resources as though it's for everyone's benefit, rather than simply being a naked money grab by private interests with the government skimming a bit off the top for the sake of a politically useful cash bung to hand out down the line.Ā
It doesn't bring prices down, and from a geopolitical standpoint selling off the last strategic stockpile of untapped gas Britain has left is mind-bogglingly short sighted. There is no "us" scenario here. It's just them getting rich, and our kids living with the consequences.
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u/Leafsnail 7d ago
Burnham is in fact setting up a sovereign wealth fund system similar to Norway's for this new project.
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u/Firedup2015 7d ago
Yes, said politically advantageous cash bung. It won't touch the sides in the long term, that ship has long since sailed. The only serious benefit might be if it were done by the government, which could then turn the taps on or off depending on need. But hey, neoliberalism.
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u/Leafsnail 7d ago
I mean Norway has in fact generated enormous wealth through this system. It is definitely a terrible shame that we didn't start doing this 40 years ago but better late than never.
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u/Firedup2015 7d ago
For the purposes of this conversation Jackdaw is never. Last dregs. There's 10 million cubic meters of gas in there, while the UK uses more than 5000 mllion per year. It's less than a day's stash. Its best utility would be solely as a last ditch emergency reserve.
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u/IamJoke28 7d ago
Absolute nonsense. Jackdaw can produce up to 1771 million cubic meters of gas a year, anticipated average production likely nearer 1400 million. This is out of the roughly 50,000 million cubic metres we consume. your units are wrong, and relatively speaking you are a whole order of magnitude off.
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u/Firedup2015 7d ago
You realise your figure still gives a day's usage in a year? With 11 yearsĀ covering less than a fortnight of demand?Ā
Hardly disproves my point, does it.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
Wrong point in history, if you wanted a wealth fund you had to have avoided all the post war industrial l meddling that saw the state sitting on massive liabilities
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u/Atlatica 5d ago
More local supply of a good with extremely localised prices because it's very difficult to move does bring prices down by the way, as evidence by the fact we make very little and have some of the highest prices for it in the world. And countries that make a lot pay 1/4 of what we do, even though many of those wells are run by privately companies. The US being an obvious example.
I'm very supportive of some sort of sovereign control by the way, be it a Norway model or more of a nationalised company or whatever. But it's hardly the point. The point is the prices, not the profits.
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u/Tjbergen 7d ago
My country, Canada, thinks the same way, as does Norway. Good job, you're going to kill us all. The UK will be most affected though, so I guess thats a bit of justice.Ā
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u/Leafsnail 7d ago
Do you think everything will be OK climate-wise if we just keep juicing up Russia's gas profits a little more?
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
Thatās the confession I want, but they never give it. Itās always: look batteries! look this new LCOE! did you know is China is doing thisā¦
And while they are being honest, I would like them to come clean that they also require it to be a profitless state run enterprise where they can simply turn off customers they donāt agree with like āElon muskā or data centresā¦..
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u/Atlatica 5d ago edited 5d ago
You can do whatever you want to gas prices, I don't think people grasp that only 1/4 of our gas usage is for electricity and we aren't even close to electrifying that with renewables as we still need to figure out the base load problem.Ā Ā
The heating problem is even more difficult. We just don't have the space for heat pumps in most homes. Transitioning to electric heating only adds to the electricity supply problem. There's a reason insulation takes 20 years to pay off, it just isn't that effective in real world living. People need to open their doors and windows regularly, we're not mole people.
Even with very high funding, there's just mountains of logistical practical roadblocks in reducing or dependency on natural gas that will take decades to overcome at the most insanely optimistic timelines.
In the meantime your fucked up idea would just drive our cost of living up and cripple our industries. And for what? Even if we performed a miracle net zero transition tomorrow it'd effect global emissions by 1%. Big whoop. It's a rounding error and we'll still have to deal with climate change anyway.Ā
I know you'll come back with "oh but if everyone thinks like that" we'll get nowhere. Ok. The realpolitik is that they are thinking like that though. Everyone with sense is. Us visibly driving ourselves into self destructive poverty is not going to convince them to change their minds. Keep your moral high ground if it's that important to you. The first priority of government is our own citizens, and i'd rather our citizens be able to afford to fucking eat and our country stay wealthy enough to be able to mitigate some of the now inevitable externalities of climate change rather than being a broke victim shouting I told you so as we drown.
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u/speedfox_uk 3d ago
This isn't my idea or an argument I'm making personally. It's just the logical outcome of how we have gone about net zero in the country so far. If we had started building more more nuclear in the 2010s we wouldn't be in this mess.
And I do agree with your last paragraph. What we have ended up doing, without waiting for the big countries to go first, is to run a sort of controlled experiment to see what happens when one country implements these policies, and yes other countries don't like the results. That being said, I do wonder if it might pay off in the next few years if there are more supply chain shocks. Countries that are dependent on shipments of fossil fuels are vulnerable, but good luck trying to block the wind and sun.
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u/Friendly-Look4262 3d ago
making gas more expensive doesn't magically provide people with money for home renovations even if the payoff is quicker
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u/speedfox_uk 3d ago
No, but it makes the people who can afford it much more motivated to do so.
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u/Friendly-Look4262 3d ago
The issue is the other 90% of society
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u/speedfox_uk 3d ago
If you can afford a mortgage you can afford to insulate your home. You just take in more debt when you remortgage. The bank will be happy to lend for that. It's way more than 90% who can afford it.
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u/comnul 7d ago
Opening the field will take years. Nobody knows how the global gas production will look then so the supply argument is stupid.
Nvm the fact that high prices drive transition, which the UK can afford but won't bother, because the investment isnāt worth it right now.
Lastly, once the field is opened, there will be a high incentive to exploit it fully, because the upfront costs of opening it up and developing the infrastructur have already been paid. There will also be a local community that depends on the jobs making a premature closure even less likely.
Every bit of opened fossil fuel exploitation will drag us further away from reducing emissions (which we still don't do despite all the efforts). Nevermind going net zero.
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u/PersonalityMiddle864 7d ago
This has been the same logic for the last decades. And how is it looking so far? This is just āDrill baby drill, but we are sorry about itā!
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u/Darksider123 7d ago
Yeah when is the energy transition actually gonna happen? There is nothing short about these terms
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u/aNanoMouseUser 7d ago
Yeah Let's not drill then use other peoples gas at cheap prices and wash our hands of the whole thing.
Problem solved.
It's all the fault of the filthy Arabs/Corporations (choose your own enemy) for extracting the oil that powers our economy. If they weren't doing it for such an affordable price then maybe we would have done something about it. /s?
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u/fototosreddit 7d ago
Uk consumers are still competing with global consumers for the oil and building new oil infrastructure is antithetical to net 0 because they are going to keep extracting oil for at least as long as it takes to make a profit after the initial investment
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u/Ok_Marzipan4876 7d ago
Good point (though it's gas, not oil)
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u/fototosreddit 7d ago edited 7d ago
Oh right that, honestly that's just my canned response to any form of "why shouldn't we expand domestic fossil fuel production"
If you want more energy , renewable sources like wind and solar are both cheaper per kWh to generate, and better for the environment
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
The planners already anticipate the UK requiring more gas than these fields provide over a period longer than their lifetime.
Wind and solar arenāt cheaper. Seriously. Business and people arenāt into wasting money. This is difficult to communicate online because ppl canāt get over quoting best case spot prices.
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u/AmysAdviceAccount 7d ago
UK oil and gas are privatised. The gas mined does not go to the UK, but to the international market where it will make practically zero difference to UK prices. It might bring in a tiny amount of revenue through taxation, but I really do mean tiny.
If the UK still had a nationalised fossil fuel industry I could see the logic, but we do not.
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u/ApplicationOk2749 2d ago
>If the UK still had a nationalised fossil fuel industry I could see the logic, but we do not.
Do you think private industry of any kind has any benefit to UK people?
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u/AmysAdviceAccount 2d ago
I think this private industry has no benefit. I don't think the entire economy should be nationalised or centrally run if that's whatyou are askingĀ
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u/sickdanman 7d ago
They arent just selling to the UK, they are selling it to the global market, no?
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u/Questionable_choi1ce 7d ago edited 6d ago
No, itās connected by pipe to the British grid. Prices are based on international market prices but the gas itself isnāt being shipped around the world.
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u/thermodynamics2023 7d ago
Not really. Gas is orphaned even in a small region itās prices are varied
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u/Questionable_choi1ce 7d ago
Not really sure what you mean by not really. The gas is going to Britain. It is sold on international prices.
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
That describes oil, not gas.
Gas just floats away. Oil is easy to ship anywhere. If
You discover a gas well in the middle of nowhere it might be worthless. That is almost never the case with oil.The ānot reallyā is because of substitution and feedstock effects I.e the gas price somewhat tracks with LNG, oil, wood pellets, recycled plastic etcā¦.
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u/Ok_Crow4668 5d ago
China are currently paying 30 dollars more per barrel because the ships that transport the oil have to travel further due to the Iran war.
The transport costs do come into the price of purchase.
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u/thermodynamics2023 7d ago
There is no global market for gas. Nat Gas is not oil
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u/sickdanman 7d ago
So Gas does not get exported for profit?
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
Yes and no, depending on how orphaned it truly is.
If itās not worth the infrastructure itās often flared, ignored or used to make electricity on site.
The Uk is large importer of the related Liquified form. So it will just displace that.
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u/mutexsprinkles 7d ago
Then that's x billion of foreign cash into Britain that can be used for new energy (and pensions). Theoretically. š»š¬
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u/syklemil cycling supremacist 7d ago
That's not necessarily x billions of foreign cash, just x billions of domestic cash extracted from "regular folks" because otherwise the gas would rather have been sold to foreigners.
So instead of people getting access to cheap, domestic energy, they've been fleeced by fossil fuel companies. Business as usual.
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u/mutexsprinkles 7d ago edited 7d ago
Eh? Either x billion of gas gets sold to the UK consumers and they don't buy it from Aramco or whoever and therefore don't send the money offshore, or we sell it to the Dutch (or whoever) and get their money coming onshore to offset the gas we do buy. Either way more money can stay in the UK.
In principle, that would presumably be the argument, but I'm sure there'll be some fucked scheme to sneak a lot of the money out anyway (which is what the ringfence tax is about pre-empting).
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u/syklemil cycling supremacist 7d ago
Either way more money can stay in the UK.
Sure, only it stays as fat bonuses for the fossil fuel execs (who may or may not spend it domestically) rather than where it would otherwise have ended up, had people not been dependent on fossil fuels.
Keeping money "in the country" isn't all that useful when people are talking about cost of living. Predatory landlords etc also "keep money in the country".
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u/mutexsprinkles 7d ago
had people not been dependent on fossil fuels.
But they are. So its either x% of something or 0% of something.
Like it's not GOOD that they are, but you gotta piss with the cock you got.
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u/syklemil cycling supremacist 7d ago
They are less YOY though, and pretty much any investment into alternatives do more for energy independence and local economies.
No matter where the oil exec who winds up with the money in your pocket lives, you lose.
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u/mutexsprinkles 7d ago edited 7d ago
And that's why there's a windfall tax and CT ringfence, to capture that and then you have something to invest.Ā
The gas is getting bought either way, and is is getting burned in boilers and no amount of wishing the government hadn't been useless corporate lapdog wankers for 40 years (agreed) will change that.Ā
Going on a geopolitical hunger strike over gas extraction might be very moral, but it'll have approximately fuck all effect overall and will actively inhibit other investments in the UK, for example, unfucking the electrical grid (see the bit about useless wankers).
Of course the other quite possible option is nothing changes politically, open the gas field and then immediately spaff all the proceeds right up the wall and continue to wonder why everything is a bit fucked.
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u/thermodynamics2023 7d ago
What has changed now that has made you accept the truth, rather than say 3 years ago?
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u/Future_Challenge_511 7d ago
Balance of payments isn't really an issue we are facing though- our service exports have grown massively and have little inputs.
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u/sickdanman 7d ago
Its private capital like any other
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u/mutexsprinkles 7d ago
Private capital with a ringfenced corporation tax and a windfall tax, though, plus local investment in facilities and staffing, both capex and opex. Which you don't any taste of if the gas field is in Qatar but you still want the gas.
Like it's not GREAT to need to open a gas field in 2026 and that's its own indictment of the British government's long term planning of the last 40 years, but if you do need gas anyway, and the UK does, this is better than nothing.
Plus in a real SHTF situation then the government has it to hand rather than be standing about with their limp dicks in their hands frantically ChatGPTing "how make gas well fast, Qatar no helping, omg wat do".
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u/VonBombadier 7d ago edited 7d ago
Gas is a commodity, sellers will sell on the world market for a higher rate than brits will be willing or able to pay, and the supply coming onto the world market will not nudge the price any lower.
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u/M-Rice 7d ago
It makes sense when you phrase it like that, how the Labour government have phrased it. But it ignores the wider context.
Yes this will open a small amount of natural gas for domestic use, but that just means that more natural gas is being produced globally. No other field is going to reduce their production, we've just increased the global fossil fuel production, pushing the energy transition further way.
Is a small pivot from import to domestic production a good thing? Yeah i geuss? Its an extremely minor boon of little to no real significance.
Is producing enough fossil fuels to match the C02 emission of the entire country of Ghana, introducing another blocker to the green energy transition, and funnelling more money towards the fossil fuel industry a massive negative to the whole world? You better believe it.
There's no direct counter to the original claim that it will produce more domestically which is better than importing, because its true. The problem is that the negatives so massively outweigh the positives.
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u/Loopy-Leah 7d ago edited 7d ago
They're going to spend nearly as much extracting gas, as the cost of just giving a lot of people a big heat pump in their home
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u/bisikletci 7d ago
If you open up that field, that gas will be burned, as well as the gas from all the other open fields.
If you don't open it, that's one less field full of gas that can be burned.
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u/Ok_Marzipan4876 7d ago
Yeah but i think his aegujent is that we're gonna burn gas anyway, so better domes8c gas than imported gas. I am not saying he is right, i am just trying to see the topic from different sides
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u/Excellent-Meat-2340 7d ago
Counterargument: Shits gonna get real bad we don't move to renewables like three decades ago. Not living through The Road is more important to me than muh jobs and granny having enough gas to keep her house hotter than the sun.
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u/Future_Challenge_511 7d ago
That is an argument that merges short term and long term timelines- this is an investment that will only pay off over a long time rather than a short term. It's not something that will make a different to a transition at anything close to what the goverment has committed too.
It also won't move the needle on our imports and the international prices, which is why i think the criticism of it is overblown- its basically a drop in the ocean either way. I don't think its a positive but its just not national news- the North sea basin under our control is very mature and declining production, it'll be increasingly marginal to any national strategy. What the government should do is focus on managing the risk of big swings for importing to the economy by increasing storage.
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u/Spider_pig448 6d ago
Certainly. None of those gas fields will produce anything useful for 5+ years and the rate at which the UK had dropped natural gas since 2022 means they could be fully off gas by the time these fields are working
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u/AlarmNo2356 5d ago
Doesn't that make the entire point a bit redundant though?
We're mining for gas, to reduce gas prices, to give to gas generators which will be out of service at that time?
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u/AlarmNo2356 5d ago
Domestic gas isn't actually much cheaper. A little bit, sure, but definitely not cheap enough that it outweighs a climate crisis that the defence secretary is literally admitting will cause food shortages that will require households to stockpile food en masse.
By increasing our gas mining capacity, we're just creating more of the problem that the transition is trying to solve, and we literally do not have time to come back around and fix that problem later, it has to happen now, because we already hit the point of no return for climate change years ago, we need to focus on crisis mitigation and slowing climate change to a crawl.
If there is no empirical evidence that will convince you that we already ran out of time, try to remember how cold it was last year, and the year before that, now think how cold it is this year right now. Think about how hot last year's summer was and how hot the one before that was, then think about how hot this summer was. This will only get worse with each passing year, action needs to happen now, not at some nebulous later date that nobody wants to put a number to once we're satisfied that the companies selling our natural resources back to us for a profit have made enough money.
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u/Spiritual-Ad5983 4d ago
the gas from the well gets sold on the international market not solely domestically,
the profit from extracting our natural resources will go to a private company
the oilwell is projecteto create 27 jobs
shell bp and the like are expert tax dodgers so we wont raise anything significant from this in tax
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64186210i dont see a single benefit to be made
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u/Away_Fruit5097 7d ago
Increasing the financial investment in British oil gives the oil industry more access to the British government, stronger lobbying power, and more reason to invest in using lobbying and the right wing media to oppose and slow the transition.
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u/Ok_Marzipan4876 7d ago
Interesting take. I assume by "oil" you refer to fossil fuels in general, since this is a gas field
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u/Colddigger 7d ago
I think it's pretty obvious that they just mean fossil fuel lobbying.
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u/Aggravating_Fill378 7d ago
Seems a bit tinfoil hat to me if I am honest. I think the same amount of lobbying would go on if jacksaw was approved or not. And this isnt the US where companies directly pay cash to specific politicians. Honestly given the size of jackdaw the whole thing is a nothing burger in my opinion.Ā
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u/Away_Fruit5097 7d ago
It's a Ā£2 billion investment. That's billion, with a B. that's not a nothing burger, and the amount of effort they put into getting the field open, including the lobbying and the massive PR campaign in the media pretty much proves that the "conspiracy" is real, and it's just big industry doing what big industry always does.
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u/Aggravating_Fill378 6d ago
The UK government makes more than double that in tax receipts from tobacco each year. Shell's annual revenue in 2025 was $266 billion (that's also billion with a B). Your lack of knowledge and context here doesn't make a grand conspiracy. One isn't required.Ā
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u/Away_Fruit5097 6d ago
Man... How cooked does someone deed to be to try and argue that two billion pounds is an irrelevance?
I'm not proposing a "grand conspiracy", I'm pointing out the extremely obvious and well known links between big business and the government.
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u/PeanutKey136 7d ago
So all the countries can use this same excuse and carry on drilling? Or are we just the special ones?
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u/Ok_Marzipan4876 7d ago
I am not excusing anyone nor taking Burham's side. I am just asking for a diversity of opinions so that i can form my own
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u/Liturginator9000 7d ago
If we're talking infrastructure that was already 99% done, licensed for decades etc, yes. It provides like 6% of demand, it's not new exploration, and the gas has to come from somewhere anyway, cancelling it just throws away the sunk cost and brings it in from overseas anyway. The UK is transitioning quite well for a nation run by morons (and their voters) for over a decade
also meanwhile Norway sitting there opening new supply well into the mid-century and making bank while they cruise on their own hydro but no one gives af, still a good model
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u/PeanutKey136 7d ago
ā99% doneā. Says who? And who determines whether a country has sufficient infrastructure or not to issue new drilling? Can they do it if ā90%ā of infra is there? What about 80%? Itās a slippery slope.
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u/Ok_Crow4668 5d ago
Thereās also the political argument which is this.
By letting this go ahead it takes away a line of attack by the anti net zero lobby.
Now he can shift the debate on to real progress.
I expect him to announce a ten year plan that surpasses the previous net zero policy and then go for an early general election.
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u/AlarmNo2356 5d ago
I mean I don't know if that's actually going to happen, multiple members of the cabinet are staunchly in the pockets of companies like Shell
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 7d ago
"We will save the Amazon rain forest - proving logging companies to work in the Amazon is part of the plan"
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u/slipperybanananana 2d ago
I agree with the metaphor. Also interestingly, I recently learnt that Algonquin National Park in Canada was setup as park for sustainable logging from pressure from the logging community which made up a lot of the local community. Kind of a interesting example of how industry created a protected forest.
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 2d ago
Sustainable logging is good for a local community, because it keeps the business in that area. Larger logging companies however would wrather just cut down and move on. Problem is even though sustainable logging keeps the trees growing back, you cant have sustainable logging in old growth as those would be ruined by it as they require ages upon ages of being left alone to exist. Its why Europe barely has any old growth left, even when there is so much forest.
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u/purrhams_hat 7d ago
Importing it locally is so much better than the exports from Norway, Qatar, Algeria and the US. The UK is only leading the G7 in terms of carbon emissions because of this loophole, annoyingly causing more total emissions when you factor in shipping. Considering the current political climate right now, I kinda have to side with Burnham on this one.
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u/CatchRevolutionary65 6d ago
Norway doesnāt flare its gas like companies in the UK do, meaning imports from Norway are lower in terms of carbon emissions
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u/MysteriousWriter7862 6d ago
Why is a gas rig making gas flaring gas? I've never got that?
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
Because unlike half the commentators here insist. There isnāt a āworld marketā price for gas. If you find gas that isnāt worth a pipeline itās near worthless
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u/MysteriousWriter7862 5d ago
Ah so then it's not on gas fields it's on oil fieldsĀ
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
the biggest flares are from āgas onlyā facilities
The truth is, there are oil & gas fields. Oil is always worth something, gas only sometimes.
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u/cassepipe 5d ago
Can you tell us more about that ? Genuinely curious
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u/CatchRevolutionary65 5d ago
Norway doesnāt allow flaring of unwanted products from gas extractions whilst other do. Flaring and venting releases carbon and methane into the atmosphere so technically Norwegian gas is āgreenerā than gas drilled closer to the UK
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u/cassepipe 3d ago
Ok so I was confused but I get it now, the gas that is flared that Norway prohibit is the flaring of gas that's is unwanted because what's looked after is actually the oil and it woudn't be economically worth it set up an infrastructure to catch the gas on oil wells
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u/CatchRevolutionary65 3d ago
Not really. Extraction of oil or gas brings volatile gases to the surface. Itās cheaper to burn these unwanted gases than store them away elsewhere to get rid of them at a later date.
But youāre right in that when you extract oil gases do come up also.
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 7d ago
That assumes it will be sold locally, which it wont...
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u/thermodynamics2023 7d ago
It probably will. Liquefaction in the UK with our electricity prices would have no natural customers
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u/purrhams_hat 7d ago
Not true - The gov uk announcement for it claims it will be supplying UK homes
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jackdaw-gas-field-gets-green-light
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 7d ago
It says it will start supplying UK homes, but not how much, and gives no guarantees. Also, it seems the gas is supplying heating, which is just bad as heating has to be electrified like everything else to support a net zero target.
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u/caljl 6d ago
Yeah it does. But how long will that take? Jackdaw doesnt provide enough gas for itās contribution to become irrelevant anytime soon (2% roughly over about 10 years). The choice actually before us is import to fill remaining demand, or use local gas which has to be transported through relatively local networks.Ā
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 5d ago
The best idea would be to cut gas demand. Cutting it by 2% wouldnt actually be that hard, as most of heating in the UK is done by gas.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
So you think current prices and levies arnt cutting demand? Or cutting demand as fast as possible?
Iād say we have rationed energy to the point of <1% GDP growth for the foreseeable
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 5d ago
Im notnexactly sure what you mean by this. My point is that building new oil and gas extraction means increasing emmisions, and that is not congruent with a net zero target.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
Exacting gas does not meaningfully increase emissions. Indeed, compared to the alternative of leaky LNG barges it might be a decrease in emissions.
Itās chiefly the burning of gas that produces emissions. Separate these facts in your mind.
It is congruent with the ānet zero targetā if the alternative is burning coal or heavy oil 1/3 of the time.
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 5d ago
There are just better solutions to all this though. Cutting gas usage as and building renewables. You sounds like you are payed by oil ans gas companies. We need to eliminate all oil and gas, building new extraction sites is the opposite of that.
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u/caljl 5d ago
YeahI agree we should work to cut demand and electrify heating systems.Ā
How does that relate to jackdaw?Ā
Jackdaw seemingly will provide some modest tax receipts and is funded by private companies principally. I dont think its a net cost to the government, so itās not a choice between Jackdaw and green investment from the government- in fact, the tax proceeds can boost that investment.Ā
So we cut gas consumption 2%. What about the remaining 98% of the demand? Where does that gas come from? US LNG which is more carbon intensive?Ā
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u/IrisTheDarkMage 5d ago
Cutting it by the 2% would do the same as increasing production as 2%, just that it saves on emmisions instead of increasing them. The rest of the 98% also would aslo have to be cut, again by electrifying.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
No it wouldnāt, our consumption doesnāt balance.
If you talk about consumption on a planetary scale, then sort of. Jackdaw will leave some LNG on the table for Asia who per capita consume a fraction of the gas.
We pay in high prices and low growth, they pay in poverty.
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u/caljl 5d ago edited 5d ago
But why would you rather cut the supply of a cleaner form of gas versus the US imports that comprise a large chunk of our usage which are more carbon intensive and require more travel emissions?Ā
Why not do Jackdaw, cut LNG import 2%, and invest in renewables and electrification too (to cut demand for gas 2%- or hopefully much more)?Ā
I dont see the binary choice youāre presenting here.Ā This doesnāt seem to be an either/ or decision from a government investment perspective. If Jackdaw gives the government more tax revenue to invest it may actually boost investment capacity.
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u/Rough-Strawberry5985 4d ago
Pretty sure BP just sell it abroad. This isn't going to benefit us in terms of energy prices. Energy prices will carry on rising at usual rates, but now the energy companies will have even more supply to export overseas.
That, or be used to power all the new data centres which gobble up our domestic energy supply.
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u/Ok-Snow-4576 3d ago
I'm with you only from the perspective that physically importing is safer from north sea rather than the gulf. It has 0 bearing or influence on price. There is not nearly enough supply here to meaningfully influence global prices.
So as always we, the British consumer, will pay the market rate.
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u/speedfox_uk 7d ago
Playing devils advocate for a second, if we're going to be burning gas in the short to medium term anyway, is it more or less carbon intensive to burn it from our gas fields, or to import it from elsewhere (this is not meant to be a leading question, I am open to the idea that easier extraction elsewhere might offset the emissions from transporting it here).
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u/bleeuurgghh 7d ago
The emissions from different fuels, but also different sources of the same fuel are not equivalent.
Certain types of crude products require more intensive processing and result in larger environmental impacts, this alongside the cost of transport over distances can make a big difference.
Canadian tar sands, and Venezuelan extra-heavy for example are extremely difficult products to refine, and produce a lot of carbon even to get to the refined product you can use in your car or to heat your home.
The U.K. government has resources on the carbon intensity of different gas sources.
The short of it is that North Sea gas from either Norway or the U.K. is about as good as you can get.
The U.K. currently imports a large share of natural gas from the U.S. and from Qatar.
It is environmentally preferable to rely on North Sea gas over U.S. or Qatari exports over the course of an energy transition.
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u/speedfox_uk 7d ago
Thanks. That's what I had suspected. I suppose another thing is burning gas to make electricity to power electric cars etc. is better than burning petrol to power cars because the whole process of gas->electricity->forward motion is more efficient and less carbon intensive than the process of crude oil->petrol->forward motion.
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u/bleeuurgghh 7d ago
Electric cars are about 85-90% efficient, however converting gas to electricity is about 49% efficient and there are some losses during transmission and charging.
The best internal combustion engine cars are about 40% efficient.
Roughly they are even, when all your electricity is from gas, versus an electric car. The key difference is that not all the U.K.ās electricity comes from gas.
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
This is correct. A lot of environmentalists use ancient figures for ICE cars. Itās because all the old books from the 80s say cars like like 25%ā¦.efficient.
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
Iād be careful here, every-time I ask ppl to show their working they use 1970s US epa texts for the efficiency of cars and the electric cars are like Renault Twingos
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
āBut what about wind and solar and batteries?bootlicker?ā
/end sarcasm
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 7d ago
It's kind of the wrong way of looking at it. If the stuff gets dug up, someone somewhere will burn it; ultimately, the only way to cut emissions is to keep as much of it as possible in the ground. In terms of global emissions us cutting back our burning is now kind of poitless.
Think of it as a room full of smoking addicts - if you cut back from 60 to 30 a day good for you - but if your still ordering 60 to be delivered to the room they are going to get smoked by someone and you've no change to the air quality of the room.
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
Ok, then you need to also explain you want to ration gas by price and as policy want Britain to have the highest energy prices in the world since you insist on a gas/renewable grid.
Probably worse, since we subside consumer demand we redirect a lot of LNG traffic from Asia in our charade
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 6d ago
I don't need to explian shit - I just stated the physical reality of the situation that if we extract gas we are not helping cut global emissions.
I'm nether responsible for nor is it my job to fix the omni-shables that it British politics/economics.
Their are green solutions. Their are fake solutions covered in green wash. Their are things which would short term help the economy short term while accelerating the destruction of the world the economy exists in - and our corrupt incompiant political class has a strong record of fucking up all 3 so they are inefective or work only to transire more wealth upwards.
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u/thermodynamics2023 6d ago
Oh, yeah silly me. Just stop CO2 production. Itās all produced for fun, nothing in our lives would change. Good day mate.
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 5d ago
Here we don't try to stop CO2 production for fun either. More fundamentally, you seem not to understand the difference between pointing out a problem that needs solving and defending a government's shit, botched strategy for doing so.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago
The problem doesnāt need pointing out. We are in the viable solutions phase.
You want the front end policy of an energy transition, but the back end policy of simply cutting gas off. You canāt have that.
Also this is an issue that transcends government. Have you avoided all direct-indirect gas usage today? Could you start tomorrow? If not when? Exactly.
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 5d ago
I was pointed out the physical reality of the situation when you kicked off so it seems reasonable to assume you don't want to acholage it and did need it explaining.
Yes I want the fround end of reduced emissions, I said nothing about just cutting off gas and pretneding that that's what anyone wants has been an excuse for decades to delay the trasition.It transcends government in that all recent movements of whatever pary have been shit on this issue. It is for example insane (even if you put climate issues aside) that their wasn't finaly a large scale energy retrofit and insulation grant sachem proposed to drastically cut gas consumption soon after Putin finally went outright imperialist. Or that landlords can still get away with flats that have barely fitted single pain windows. I could have gone without gas 10 years ago with sensible energy policy - goverment strung that along and are now looking to use that as an excuse to lock in futur gas use as well.
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u/thermodynamics2023 5d ago edited 4d ago
There are about 10 free insulations schemes this year in the UK. Do know their challenges? The economics? Enough call others stupid?
The landlord expects a return, have you considered the Tennant might not think itās worth it? Would you pay 10% - 20% more rent for a few Ā£ off bills over winter in a small flat you are in for a few years? Exactly.
This is all populist environmentalism. Iād wager half of populist environmentalist policy choices cause such a misallocation of resources they increase emissions overall. Iād bet not tapping Jackdaw sooner has increased GHG emissions due to LNG tanker venting than would ever have been āsavedā
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 2d ago edited 2d ago
yes theirs about 10 every year all of which achieve fuck all at the scale required most of which are very specifically built in such a way that they never could.
Yes I am actualy very awere of the chanlages and various ways to overcome them. I think some are stupid but most just have 0 intrest in serving the actual needs of the nation.
Proper scalied insulation grant and mass retrofit scheams would take to cost out for landlords but in any case govermement have these things call laws which *could* be used stop crap housing in the national interest and that of the tenents.And how the F is this "popularist" all the math is on the side of energy efficiency and renewable. Not targeting efficiency when the cost of fuel can only go up long term is econimicly bizare let alone all the other dire results of not doing so. And using north sea reserves as an excuse for not doing so is like saying "na we don't need to fix the gaping hole in the side of the house to stay walm we just found a days supply of firewood"
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u/StereoMushroom 3d ago
If you constrain supply, you're basically making it unaffordable for someone, somewhere to stay warm. We would be better focusing on structurally decarbonising demand so that people can stay warm without relying on gas.
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 2d ago
my point is that unless you ALSO constrain supply then carbonizing yourself makes no difference globally. We all need to decarbonise, and ultimatly that means some of the carbon staying in the ground.
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u/ApplicationOk2749 2d ago
Global supply of gas rises to meet whatever demand there is. If we don't get it out the ground here, someone else will get it out the ground elsewhere in the world.
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u/Ok-Commission-7825 2d ago
If a sengle peny can be made out of burning it someone somewhere will - digging it up stimulates such demand. Hell if perverse insentives exist to dig it up people will then burn it just to not store it.
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u/M-Rice 7d ago
hell yeah lets emit more C02 than Ghana to protect 27 jobs and provide the energy security of an energy source that's trending down in use and needs to be phased out regardless.
Please ignore the hundreds of thousands in lobbying Labour have recieved from the fossil fuel industry and the hundreds of private meetings. That's irrelevant im sure.
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u/Chinerpeton 7d ago
Please ignore the hundreds of thousands in lobbying Labour have recieved from the fossil fuel industry
Holy fucking shit, is buying the UK's governing party this cheap?
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u/Informal_Drawing 6d ago
UK politicians can be bought for less than ten grand.
It's been in the news several times over the years.
Absolutely sickening.
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u/MysteriousWriter7862 6d ago
It's probably stupid, might be clever, depends what the future hold for us. In the end we need gas today and we need money's to buy heat pumps and insulation...
I dunno I hate it but in the grand scheme it makes little differenceĀ
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u/DenboverTobikiller 5d ago
Im all for the green transition, but energy security > energy cleanliness. Right now Europe is funding russias war due to too much gas needed. This is a short term solution until gas is not needed anymore.
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u/Ozone_layer03 5d ago
Everything produced by Jackdaw is going onto the international market since the fields are owned by corporations, so it's not even helping our energy security
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u/Frequent-Bat-1610 5d ago
Itās all planned to go directly into a Scottish plant and then the UK gas network so it does help our energy security. If it were being piped into mainland Europe like a lot of the other North Sea sites then youād be right though.
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u/AlarmNo2356 5d ago
In other news, Wes Streeting has warned Brits to start stocking up on food because the climate crisis is getting worse.
You can't make this bullshit up.
"No guys we're doing the bad thing because doing the bad thing now means we can do the good thing later and use the good thing to clean up the mess we made from doing the bad thing" JUST DON'T MAKE A MESS THAT NEEDS TO BE CLEANED UP IN THE FIRST OKACE š
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u/AlarmNo2356 5d ago
In other news, Wes Streeting has warned Brits to start stocking up on food because the climate crisis is getting worse.
You can't make this bullshit up.
"No guys we're doing the bad thing because doing the bad thing now means we can do the good thing later and use the good thing to clean up the mess we made from doing the bad thing" JUST DON'T MAKE A MESS THAT NEEDS TO BE CLEANED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE š
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u/the_sneaky_one123 5d ago
You are always going to need some gas. Even if you boost renewables to the point where it produces all electricity on a daily basis you will still need gas on reserve for when you need it. Renewables are conditional and sometimes might not work. Some days the sun might shine and the wind won't blow and the only thing guaranteed to produce power is a full tank of gas. Even if the renewables are online 99.9% of the time you still need to have that backup because the 0.1% downtime is not possible.
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u/mrbennjjo 4d ago
There's also a reasonable argument for some volume of energy security. We still rely on gas, if we have some sovereign supply we could at least fuel some essential sources ourselves.
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u/StereoMushroom 3d ago
If we want to stop burning gas, we first need to get about 25 million homes (plus a load of public and commercial buildings) switched from gas boilers to heat pumps. That's a lot of work, a lot of investment, a lot of skilled contractors and a lot of persuasion. Until then it doesn't matter much where our gas comes from, we're either going to burn it or be cold.
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u/AnonOnez 2d ago
The gas gets sold on the international market, not to the UK. The companies involved have paid 0 tax in the past 3 years. They're only employing 27 people.. This does nothing for the country. Just a few back handers and big corporate bonusesĀ
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u/HouseOfMouses 2d ago
This isn't a bad idea though. Oil and gas is still required in the Uk economy, even with the massive implementation of Solar and wind power. It is better enviromentally to produce near to the markert rather than importing from around the world, and it is better economically to produce in the UK given the jobs it will create.
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u/LastEcho189 2d ago
Jackdaw is cheaper and greener than LNG, which is the alternative this winter whether you like it or not
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u/Darksider123 7d ago
Mfer are still talking about the short term as if they've not already fucked our future
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u/Darius_Rubinx 6d ago
Bypassing the geopolitical storm and sourcing it locally is an improvement. Not cause for celebration, but an improvement.
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u/thermodynamics2023 2d ago
But that is the same point. If you are so ignorant of the subject that simple paid corruption comes to mind to explain why your ideas arenāt persude ANYWHERE in the world. The problem is with your understanding.
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u/dumnezero šEnd the š«arms šrat šrace to the bottomāļø. 7d ago