The Oil Drum: Europe

Click all charts to enlarge, without call out.

This BERR assessment (960 kb pdf, 58 slides) of oil and gas production on the UK continental shelf arrived in my mail box last week. It is one of the best summaries I've seen and should be read by all with an interest in the future of UK and European energy security. The chart above is based upon the BERR forecast for UK oil and gas production. It is time for Alistair Darling and Mervyn King to explain to the British people why they see current problems with energy prices and associated inflation as a transient blip when the UK seems to be in a terminal dive towards insolvency.

Today a historic moment took place. The Dutch government acknowledged in its new energy strategy that Dutch natural gas production has passed its peak (file in Dutch here). Stating that the peak occurred in 2007/2008 and the Netherlands will have become a net importer of natural gas by 2025.

Figure 1 - Dutch gas forecast from TNO commissioned by the Dutch ministry of economic affairs. Y-axis in billion cubic meters Groningen Field Equivalent Heating Content. Red are the rapidly depleting small gas fields onshore and in the north sea. Light Blue is the large Slochteren field in the province of Groningen. Dark blue is the yet to be found production from small fields.

[Editor's note: The Netherlands is Europe's second largest gas producer after Norway. When the Dutch Government announces that their gas production will now decline this has major consequences for European energy security, in my opinion.]

The logo of the ASPOItaly-2 conference. It shows, superimposed to the classic ASPO peak, the mythical "post peak car", the battery powered, retrofitted Fiat 500

Conference report, many links and some pictures below the fold.

The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is one of the major gas-producing areas of North America.  It supplies about a quarter of all gas used by the US and Canada, and 98% of Canadian production.  Current production is 450 million cubic metres a day.  To put this into perspective, this volume is close to half a cubic kilometre, and the mass of this much gas is 330,000 tonnes.

The National Energy Board issues reports on various aspects of Canadian energy production and use.  This is the main entry point for natural gas reports on its web site, and this is the entry point for more general energy reports that include sections on natural gas.  It is instructive to study the evolution of scenarios put forward for the future of gas supply from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. 

[ED by Prof. Goose] Jerome a Paris also has an article on the EU energy plan today, it can be found here. It will be up on TOD:Main tomorrow morning.

Wednesday the European Commission released a series of Communications proposing a new revolutionary Energy Policy attempting to address EU’s energy challenges for the XXI century. This is a set of first comments to such proposals.

For a first perspective on what’s at stake, here’s a small graph published by the BBC, that’s worth many thousand words:

As Stuart and Prof G have pointed out, the situation in the UK seems to be growing somewhat worse.  Unfortunately the industrial solution which is to call for a moratorium on further price increases, is unlikely to be a realistic development.  The Guardian article notes:

The Association of United Kingdom Oil Independents has told the government that its members had never experienced such protracted and widespread problems. The Russian gas stand-off with Ukraine and other factors leading to soaring prices have encouraged power stations and other gas users to switch to oil.

Meanwhile, the Buncefield oil depot fire, the run on oil and other fuels due to cold weather, and a faster than expected rundown of North Sea supplies have caused chaos across the energy sector.

 It is a measure of the invisibility of the topic that I have had conversations with several folk at a relatively senior level here this week, talking about the energy situation, and almost none of them are aware of the problems that arose over Russian gas delivery to Western Europe, or have any inkling of this developing story.