Essay by Eric Worrall
The British Government could bring rapid energy price relief by issuing permits to UK based fracking company Caudrilla. But this would undermine Net Zero policies.
Households issued urgent 48-hour warning as energy bills to rise by £94
Ofgem said rising costs are driven by market instability and global conflicts such as Ukraine
Households have been issued an urgent 48-hour warning to submit meter readings ahead of a £94 increase to the average home energy bill, which is due to come into effect on 1 January.
Ofgem is increasing its price cap in response to rising wholesale prices, which has been driven because of market instability and global events, particularly the conflict in Ukraine.
The regulator’s price cap is rising by 5 per cent from the current £1,834 for a typical dual fuel household to £1,928 from Monday, with households urged to submit readings before New Year’s Day to ensure they are charged correctly.
…
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/energy-bills-rise-ofgem-meter-readings-b2471190.html
Britain sits on a lake of natural gas, 6.5 billion cubic feet under Lancashire alone. Caudrilla’s original test well in 1993 within 7 weeks of commencement was connected to the gas system, generating a steady supply of cheap energy. But the British Government since then has thrown every obstacle they can think of in the path of Caudrilla CEO Francis Egan.
One stroke of a politician’s pen could bring energy price relief to millions of British families.
How long are Britons going to continue believing the lies they’ve been fed, about the alleged dangers of global warming and fracking? At what point do Britons stop passively accepting the latest energy price hike, and demand energy self sufficiency solutions which could be implemented in weeks or months, instead of accepting yet another round of pathetic excuses about the international situation?
Doubling down on failure?
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Sorry, that was mean, and IF Brandon wins again the US will be in the same predicament after 4 more years of leftist fascist control.
That will mean the the only large British Empire descendent country not bought into this crap will be India.
The only facist is …. sorry American fascist is Trump. he has already said on day one he will be a dictator, the long rumoured RED CEASAR
It was a joke answer to a stupid question. Watch the video yourself, don’t take some idiot NYT writer’s opinion.
Trump spent four years trying to build his stupid wall, and every time the courts or Congress stopped him, he tried something else. That is NOT the mark of a dictator.
I despise almost everything about Trump, but I despise everything about Biden. If you can’t see the difference between 90% and 100%, you probably write for the NYT yourself.
Trump does have a weird sense of humor but he’s not as tyrannical as the left claims. He was obviously jerking Tucker Carlson’s chain with that dictator thing and laughed about it. I also don’t think Biden is as demented as some claim. I just think both are too old. I’d like to see a couple of middle age people running for the office.
Yep, Trump should be struck off the ballot so only government approved candidates can stand, to protect democracy /sarc.
Democrat-approved/tolerated candidates?
I thought he was Hitler, now I discover he is also Stalin and probably Genghis Khan as well.
Don’t forget Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Jack the Ripper and Putin….
Please issue a certified list of his names so we in the Peanut Gallery can keep up.
I respectfully submit the name Charles Manson.
Ming the Merciless.
Attila The Hun
He thrives on being made a scare-crow, a martyr
He gets more votes that way, because it shows the increasingly desperate, hysteric scare mongers have a whole lot of screws loose
Friend of Putin?
Except Trump is the very opposite of a fascist..
But don’t let facts get in your way.
Putin told Obama he could not understand the US was turning socialist, after it had failed in Russia
It is perhaps the greatest leftist propaganda coup to have branded the fascists as right wing. If you do a little actual research, you’ll find the difference is mainly rhetorical and the policies of the actual fascists ran in the same pack as those of the Marxists, communists, socialists, and the rest of the looney left nimnuls.
Not to mention that the Nazis were not fascists, that was Mussolini. Socialism covers many ideologies.
yep – NASDAP
There was a reason for the “S” – National Socialialistishe Deutche Arbeitern Partei
The left tend to be idealists- the right tend to be realists. Philosophically, I tend to be a realist- don’t believe in religion and similar fantasies. Reality isn’t always pleasant but coping with reality is smarter in the long run than coping with fantasies.
Too late, that title has already been usurped by the current Usurper In Cheat Pedo Pete Quid Pro Groper Joe Bidet and his Crime Family who have been squatting in the White Powder House for three years and counting.
The life-long grifting/grafting/plagiarizing, 10% BIG guy, who loves smelling hair of other men’s wives and fondle children, takes showers with his grown daughter, come to Daddy, sit on my lap, who was credited with 88 million BALLOTS FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE (the insiders know), NOT VOTES
Wilpost
I like your distinction. Ballots vs votes. That one could gain legs.
So the problem is they count ballots, not votes. One can always scrounge a million ballots or two, but finding an extra couple of million people is really difficult to do. They all want to be paid.
The Fascists were corporate socialists. It’s what very western government is.
He actually said he would not be a dictator – EXCEPT ON DAY 1, when he would open up drilling and seal the border.
Biden of course did the exact opposite on Day 1, issuing Executive Orders to stop Keystone. But the media did not call him out – I wonder why?
Fortunately, “open up drilling and seal the border” doesn’t even require a dictator- I think that’s what Trump’s real point was- just doing the job of the president in the interests of the nation- but that doing this was appear to be dictatorial to the opposition.
And that is the reason Biden must be immediately impeached and convicted
“But the media did not call him out – I wonder why?”
Try watching Fox news Media!
According to the left, only a dictator would use Presidential Orders to over turn Biden’s Presidential Orders.
Sadly, Trump Derangement Syndrome, prevails.
Trump crossed the rubicon for democrats when campaigning in 2016, stating that he would drain the swamp.
Since then, anyone with an ounce of common sense can see the degree of corruption of within the democrats, using devious political manoeuvres and the media, to spread hate and misinformation about him.
Yet at the same time, covered up, the corruption inherent in the current government.
All because they are afraid, that he will succeed in his quest.
I was in Doonbeg, when as President he visited Ireland. Whilst there, I got talking to some Americans, when I asked about their opinion of him, they commented that he’d done well for the country, and that due to his success, they’d seen their living standards increase.
Trump, also sent his two sons into the town, where they visited every pub, and bought everyone a drink.
I wonder if the current President would have done the same with his son? More likely, he’d been on the scout for a fix of some kind.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/russian-court-bans-anti-war-candidate-from-election-as-putin-s-grip-on-power-tightens/ar-AA1m8OTZ
Sound familiar? This is what the deep state, Brandon and leftists all across the US are attempting to do to TRUMP!
Not because he will be a dictator, he wont, but because he will cut the size of the US federal government. All of their jobs and their power (see the recent post on new EPA regs) depend on the massive deep state to continue its ever increasing growth.
It really is sad how hatred causes brain rot.
You will believe whatever fits your agenda, without question.
You will believe whatever fits your agenda, without question.
Have you seen the excuses and deflection already starting about one of the expected names on that Epstein list?
Joe Brandon won’t win in 2024; he will be in his basement forgetting that he was supposed to run for president again.
Biden forgets everything except how to screw Americans.
The unelected folks, his unAmerican posse of misfits, and malcontents, and odd balls, give him cue cards that list the latest screwings of the US people
According to Statista this month the UK has the world’s second highest retail electricity cost (US dollars per kilowatt-hour) at 0.46 behind Italy at 0.56.
Australia is in 8th position at 0.23 and the US is in 14th position at 0.18.
“According to classical economics and standard microeconomic theory only prospective (future) costs are relevant to a rational decision … past mistakes are irrelevant … sunk costs often influence people’s decisions” (Wiki).
The sunk-cost fallacy must be at work behind UK politicians’ obduracy as well as self-regard even hubris which eventually leads to nemesis.
Thank you. Here is the link: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/
The data is from March 2023, but there is no reason to suppose that things have got better, especially after today’s price hike.
The low prices, during sunk cost historical times, stay fresh in the mind of bureaucrats, who do not bother to follow market realities, because they spend other people’s money.
If there is not enough money, they just print it, increase taxes, fees and surcharges, and increase electric rates.
NEVER, EVER DOES THE SUBJECT OF SAVING MONEY COME UP
How long before the Big Lie that the war in Ukraine is responsible for increasing
costs of energy in UK and EU. Brits, and others, your governments defunded, passed restrictive regulations, withdrew O&G rich lands from exploitation and vilified the industry, blew up pipelines… driving prices sky high to make renewables “cheaper” than fossil fuels. Wokey feelykonomics somehow concealed the fact from themselves that renewables do not work without fossil fuel backup!! That’s what B.S.ing/handwaving about breakthroughs in batteries (one day!) has got them.
The di was cast two decades before the Ukraine war. Wake up folks. Your gov thinks you’re gullible.
.
I feel sorry for the consumer but the government should not be allowed to cover its disastrous decisions with price caps or subsidies or tax preferences or regulatory forgiveness or anything that covers for them being morons.
Fire up all fossil fuel generators and nuclear generators. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove wind and solar from the grid as quickly as is possible. The government will be better off, consumers will be better off, business will be better off and manufacturing will be better off. We will also all have more money in our pocket.
Fracking in the UK would do nothing to reduce consumer prices. All of the gas would be sold on the global market at the same price as other gas sources. In addition it would take at least a decade before it could flow in sufficient quantities to make any difference to the price.
Unless of course you think the UK government should pass a law forbidding UK gas from being sold overseas. And that the owners had to sell at a lower price than they could get in a free market.
futhermore even the former director of Cuadrilla thinks that fracking is not viable in the UK. See:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/21/fracking-wont-work-uk-founder-chris-cornelius-cuadrilla
It’s an old political trick, saying something is unviable if you don’t want it to happen. Look at all the ridiculous claims about nuclear, despite France proving nuclear is economical and affordable by deriving just under 70% of their electricity from nuclear for the last half century.
I don’t know if the former Caudrilla director is right, but not letting Caudrilla even try is highly suspect IMO.
As for gas, having a gusher of gas in Britain would significantly lower local prices. Gas costs a lot of money to transport by ship, so any local buyer would receive a steep discount over the price Britain pays for imported energy.
The a-to-z steps of fracking, pipe transport to purifying plant, to liquifying plant, to specialized ship, transport, unload LNG, regasify, and send it to users via pipes and then burning it, has at least 2 times the CO2 of traditional gas/kWh
Older LNG supply chains are more leaky than newer ones
The price to users is at least 50% higher than traditional
Burning gas has no particulates
That’s why using the gas locally will be cheaper for the UK consumer than say a LNG buyer in Europe.
Izaak Walton statement was a master course in how to lie by using truthful states that don’t apply to the actual situation.
The situation in the UK, if fracking was approved, would be similar to the traditional natural gas situation in Alberta – gas sold much cheaper than the “world” price because government malfeasance caused a lack of enough pipelines to get the gas to the world markets.
In fact, just about everyone in North America is paying less than Europe for natural gas – European’s pay for the cost of liquification and ship delivery, as well as any carbon tax.
I have no idea why Izaak would state such patently false statements.
If fracking is not viable then the government doesn’t need to ban it.
Izzy GULLIBLE… or what !!!
A political appointee agreeing with the party position.
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.
You’re forgetting the cost of transporting NG, which favors catering to a domestic market if such a market exists.
You’re wrong about gas prices. The govt could easily impose a contract for all of Cuadrilla’s gas at suitable prices, as a condition for a licence
But even if they don’t, the govt would still be able to rake in billions of tax from shale gas, just as they do from North Sea oil – a winner either way!
Just wrong. There is no way to export all the UK’s gas production. In fact, when the UK was self sufficient in gas, with a small export surplus, prices were lower than almost anywhere else in the world including Henry Hub. Facilities for gas export cost, so export only happens when the price obtained pays a premium over the local price to pay for them.
The UK moved from being self sufficient to needing the support of Norwegian pipeline gas in wintertime, which added to winter cost. Then supply fell further, and it started to need LNG to meet winter peak demand, which was much more expensive than Norwegian pipeline supply. Last year it was importing from as far away as Peru, with the cost having to cover the expensive journey via Panama as well as all the extra costs of LNG liquefaction etc..
Being able to back out high cost imports with low cost domestic production would lower costs to consumers. The UK should develop its resources to do that. Get fracking!
This chart illustrates how the pattern of UK supply has changed this century. The limited export capacity has been used particularly in summer months to supplement Continental supply based on imported LNG in more recent times.
You are in good company as Obama said the same thing about drilling off east coast of US.
Thank God the people who decided to plant grapes for wine, fruit trees, or Norman E. Borlaug in trying to figure out how to feed people didn’t think like you or Obama.
Any increase in supply results in a drop in prices. Beyond that, selling the gas means money coming into the UK instead of leaving it.
It really does amaze me how little your average socialist knows about economics.
If they understood economics they couldn’t be a socialist as they would know that the magic money tree doesn’t exit.
But this would undermine Net Zero fantasies.
Oh, for goodness sake, they just need More Cowbell.
Happy new year from Colorado. Godspeed WUWT.
Just in case anyone misreads the article: The Dependent (independent.co.uk) did NOT say any of the things written in the paragraphs following the Dependent quote. They did not say that Britain sat on a vast amount of natural gas that could be produced quickly and cheaply. They would never ever say that. They DID however lay the blame on Ukraine, even though the UK government states that there is no threat to security of gas supply and Britain’s single largest source of gas is from the UK Continental Shelf, with imports mostly from Norway. OK, so they are paying Norway more, but is that really the reason for the massive price increase??? Or are they covering up a disastrous cost increase from the installation of too much wind and solar?
[Edit] Sorry I forgot to include the link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/russia-ukraine-and-uk-energy-factsheet
hmmm… you get to edit and we don’t? 🙂
Joseph – the clue is in the big green box just under his name.
yes, of course, I did notice that- nonetheless…. notice the joking face after my comment?
The case for fracking in the U.K. is unanswerable – yet neither of the two main political parties will countenance it. Compared to manmade CO2 output in China, the burning of fracked gas in the U.K. would have minimal impact on the earth. It’s as if our politicians hate the country they are supposed to represent. Reform is the only political party that promises to deliver fracking so they will get my vote at the next election. They are a young party on the right of politics and are just finding their feet against the incompetent giants of Labour and the Conservatives. But we have to start somewhere.
If you look at energy prices, you will notice that gasoline and electricity are both about the same price per kwh.
This is because the market will shift to the lowest priced source over time, forcing other sources to match price due to supply and demand. Energy is largely fungible.
This then let’s up put a price on intermittent renewables. Wind energy has a capacity factor of about 1/3. That means 2/3 of the time you need to replace wind with something that will cost about the same.
Meaning that reliable wind will actually cost 1+2 = 3 times the cost of intermittent wind energy.
And when you do the same for solar that typically has a 1/10 capacity factor, the cost of reliable solar is 1+9 = 10 times the cost of intermittent solar
In actual fact this is a best case because it assumes a linear model, but energy prices are not linear.
But you are comparing apples to carrots – gasoline isn’t used in the production of electricity and they aren’t easily substitutable.
I could see natural gas and coal levelling out to equivalent kWh prices, after factoring in pipeline and delivery costs and their relative efficiencies – 20 years ago when coal wasn’t burdened with a truckload of “cooties” tax because greens find reliable energy and human prosperity so icky.
We are visiting Italy and I was reminded that Mussolini was the only one that could make the trains run on time.
Imagine that you took the crowding of the Eastern US and suddenly did away with all traffic law enforcement. That is Italy today. Every car looks like an accordion.
Rome worked because they used the same management style as perfected by Sun Tse. Chop the head off it the job isn’t getting done. Give the job to the next in line. Repeat until you get result you want.
Otherwise you get a population of paper pushers.
No, Il Duce did not get the Italian trains to run on time, they were frequently late and caused long delays. It’s a propaganda meme but completely wrong – even the train carrying Mussolini to Rome after he came to power was late, embarrassingly enough.
Hopefully a few will see the gradual fall in the price of petrol and diesel over the last 12 months despite high inflation and ask themselves why the cost of domestic energy is going the other way. All this despite claims of renewable (wind) being 9x cheaper than FF and that it’s been quite wet and windy this winter.
But the majority don’t seem to join the dots.
Some of the rise is so that suppliers can recoup the bad debts of those who can no longer afford their bills. And relying on hard to store gas as the main component of your reliable generation leaves you at the mercy of the wholesale market whereas building up stacks of coal over the summer does not, just like I worked during the summer felling and trimming trees, sawing and splitting so I now have bags of firewood.
I submitted my readings to ensure an accurate changeover as some suppliers seem incapable of making accurate estimates of your usage.
How about Alexander the Great? Nobody seems to complain but how was he any different than the Khans? Without question they were great leaders in the sense that they were able to mobilize a large population to a common purpose. Whether they were good or evil depends a lot on the authors of the history books.
Alexander the Great inherited a stable and successful system from his father, Phillip II and, oddly enough, the Macedonian people were somewhat more democratic than the rest of Greece. Although Alexander was King of Macedon, he had to have the approval of the army (who would cast lots to decide between candidates if there was no clear succession) and of the assemblies of regions who functioned somewhat like the army, as popular assemblies. The Macedonians were fiercely independant and quite fractious so this system did seem to work for them at the time.
Had the Germans finished their bomb in time we would be speaking German and the history books would praise hit ler as a military genius greater than Napoleon.
And that would be printed by the US media
Years ago Canada had Trudeau the elder as PM and a National Energy Program was brought in because those in power in Eastern Canada were fearful of the shift in wealth and power that oil development would bring to western Canada.
So the NEP artificially tried to control oil prices and wealth. The authors had thought it would create wealth for the east. What it did was drive down the Canadian economy as money and 1700 oil rigs left Canada and moved to the US.
In many ways Pierre Trudeau created a huge oil boom in the US and it took a decade after Trudeau for Canada to get back on its feet.
Around the same time in the US, Nixon and other politicians put in price controls on gasoline to deal with OPEC’s actions and that lead to rationing and panic buying and actually less supply because the government took away incentives to drill.
Socialism just doesn’t work.
Government can promote some vision – continent spanning railways, large militaries, nuclear research, moon landing and other space exploration – but micromanaging by disinterested bureaucrats just leads to waste and failure.
The British Government **could** do all sorts of things BUT, The Blob will thwart everything
Blob: An unofficial, informal, unspoken cartel of well intentioned folks working inside the countless offices, agencies and departments of UK Government and who publicly *claim* to have only the country’s ‘Best Wishes’ at heart
Like he11 they do. They are *only* concerned about maintaining and reinforcing their own personal situation(s) while at the Teat/Trough of Government – both as current employees but esp when ‘retired’ on bombproof, solid-gold index-linked taxpayer funded pensions for even more years than they spent haha ‘working’
The whole lot of them should be removed from the electoral roll. period. Any/every election is an opportunity for these legions of mendacious and faceless nobodies to reinforce their positions
(Has the new president of Argentina grasped that exact nettle by sacking 50% of them)
Well intentioned or self interest?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C.S. Lewis
Blob = deep state.
“How long are Britons going to continue believing the lies they’ve been fed?”
I suspect many of us don’t. Alas, the politicians, aided by the media (with a few exceptions) supporting the activists, have a stranglehold on our energy policy.
The only way to break the policy, is to elect a party, that does not subscribe to climate crisis, demon CO2, and ruinables.
But, the electorate, are entrenched in the two party system, and will continue to vote, for the worst choices we’ve ever had.
If possibly, Labour win by a small majority, they may go into a coalition (that’s the only coal, this country now possesses), and force a change to a PR system. Perhaps, then in five years, we might get a new party, that believes in the country, its people, and develop a self-sufficient energy strategy.
PR would result in permanent Uniparty coalitions. It is seriously not to be wished for. Look instead to how the Liberal Party were consigned to history in the early part of the 20th century under FPTP. Much the same happened to the Canadian Conservatives more recently. FPTP has a tipping point at which a tired old party loses almost all its seats and gets replaced.
True. Some countries can have 20 odd parties each having a representative. Unless you can have a whittling down process such that you end up with two or three final candidates but that would mean a number of votes. An electronic system could work results out quickly but then we all know how dodgy they are.
PR is more fair and gets rid of ‘Safe seats’ where it does not matter which party you vote for, the ‘usual’ candidate will win.
Ken Arrow proved that no voting system is fair in his Impossibility Theorem. Many forms of PR result in very safe seats under the party list system, or multi member constituencies. When the election is done the haggling begins, when anything you though you voted for is tossed out as a bargaining chip for politicians to secure power for themselves. The actual power in a PR system often rides with a small party that holds the balance of power. Whatever it decides determines which legislation is passed. Probably the most anti-democratic system you could devise, with the tail wagging the dog, and a license for extremists.
By contrast FPTP offers a time share system, where you get decisive government and if they aren’t good enough they get replaced instead of hanging on as a slightly smaller part of the government coalition. That allows policies to be developed and implemented. Successful policies tend to be left in place by the next government while the new government tries to rectify failed policies.
Modern democracy has been usurped not by the plebiscite voting system so much as the centralisation of party control. Narrow cliques determine who gets on the ballot paper, while the Electoral Commission rules are designed to perpetuate the position of incumbents and make it very difficult for a new party to gain traction. They affect funding, permitted advertising spend, etc. Now amplified by debanking. In reality we now are faced with a Uniparty: you may have any government you like so long as it is green and pro immigration. The result is falling participation as people are denied a proper choice.
PR systems are just as guilty of suppressing real choice. Until now, PVV has always been excluded from government in the Netherlands (and still might be despite being the largest party). In Germany there is talk of simply banning AfD, and in France the political establishment has frozen out Marie le Pen.
Meanwhile the delegation of power to supranational bodies such as the EU and UN via treaty seeks to ensure that Uniparty policies remain enshrined whatever the government. Until the revolution, or collapse into anarchy.
As most self respecting scientists know, man-made carbon dioxide has virtually no effect on the climate. It is a good gas essential to animals and plant life. Provided dirty emissions are cleaned up, we should be using our substantial store of fossil fuels while we develop a mix of alternatives including nuclear power to generate energy. There is no climate crisis, it has always changed and we have always adapted to it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were many times higher during the last mini ice age. There was no industrial revolution then. We have no control over the climate. The sun and our distance from it have by far the most effect. Most importantly, Net Zero Policy will do nothing for the climate either. Countries like China, Russia and India are sensibly ignoring it and using their fossil fuels. They will be astonished at how we are letting this Policy and Agenda 21 needlessly impoverish us as well as causing great hardship and suffering.
Here’s what has been happening to day ahead market prices in 2023. You be the judge as to whether they are increasing. Of course, they were even higher in 2022. The reality is that OFGEM are allowing retailers to continue to catch up with the losses they made during the peak of the crisis. Indeed, £16 of the increase is specifically to help recoup bad debt losses.
What this means for UK consumers is
Gas price rises from 7p to 7.42p per kWh. Electricity rises from 27p to 28.62p per kWh
In addition their is a daily standing charge of 29.6p for gas and 53.4p for electricity – these remain unchanged.
Heat pump costs are still on course to provide colder homes at almost 4 times the cost of gas.
Sigh “there”
That is just from one single horizontal well.
This “geologicals” report is very interesting (h/t Bobby Ewing). It means that the Bowland Basin was a deep-water marine environment dominated by anoxic bottom water, depositing colloidal mudstones and with an acidic surface water environment dominated by radiolarians.