I was being slightly facetious in the same way you are being sarcastic and slightly condescending
My point was we have our own resource. Use it.
You are right I am no oil expert but I seem to remember in crude numbers (no pun ) from a project I did with an oil company some years ago. These figures may be wrong so please AI and jump all over me!
I think we produce about 50% of what we need (I know we also export crude).
A third of our imports are from Norway, third or more from US and a third from OPEC and others I guess. (I could not be bothered to AI this!).
Norway is the only place with a pipe to us. So at best we get 70ish % from tankers. The anomaly I remember is even from Noway itâs 50:50 pipe and tanker.
So my maths says 85% of imported by boat. I know there is crude and refined but as you so eloquently pointed out I am not an oil expert.
My point was not really about the cost of boat fuel more - use the resource. Generate jobs. Give us greater energy security short term while we actually devise a long term strategy.
To be fair I no longer work with them so not sure how the new fields would change the equation.
The main point with North Sea oil is it goes on the international market. So weâve lost the main benefit of having your own oil fields. We donât have the refining capacity for it. We get good economic benefits from it though.
I can only guess that Burnham is looking at ways to get more cash flowing into the economy.
There was an alternate pathway with North Sea Oil, where the Thatcherâs government kept hold of the licences, built an nationalised oil industry to used the profits to generate a sovereign wealth fund. However Thatcherâs slavish devotion to the private sector meant she practically gave that oil away, and the UK only saw a fraction of the impact it should face seen.
As @Noo_Noo says, we give licences for that oil, and it gets sold on the international market, so we still end up importing it and paying market prices for it. Any politician using North Sea oil as âourâ resource to be used is being entirely disingenuous.
But the bigger issue is that every single barrel of oil we pull out of the ground and burn is another nail in the coffin of the human race.
I saw that only 8% of UK refineries can process North Sea oil. Not sure how accurate that figure is.
Yeah problem. Those that say our emissions mean diddly compared to China and the US Iâm of the thinking that we export our emissions. We may not burn it here, but someone is burning somewhere else so we can have our BMWâs or whatever. Plus, I see this as an opportunity. Ugly as it may look now, invest now and get ahead. Build the expertise. When the US finally wakes up to the issue, I can see prices for this infrastructure going stratospheric.
Absolutely spot on. We outsource our emissions and then claim we arenât the problem.
The other thing that pisses me off is the complete abdication of historic responsibility. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for something like 150-200 years. How long have we been pumping this shit into the atmosphere?
Denialist like to argue we shouldnât do anything because we only produce 1.5% of the worldâs emissions in the UK. Right, so letâs looking at the CO2 in the atmosphere we actually are responsible for and then discuss responsibility.
Yeah, but we donât have the technology. Weâre locked in to blow past 1.5 degrees, which is bad but the danger of focussing on extraction is that it distracts from getting emmisions down, and in ten years time weâre no closer to a viable extraction technology and weâve now locked in 3 degrees.
Take something like CCS. That technology has been a year away for about twenty years. Itâs totally unproven, notoriously unreliable, and yet its viability is just assumed in all our climate plans.
Probably around that, maybe slightly higher.
Most of the North Sea oil extracted these days is heavy crude, with higher sulpher content.
UK refineries capable of refining this type of oil have either been closed or not upgraded.
There is another huge elephant in the room though.
Approximately 4% - 6% of global oil production is used for synthetic fabrics. Globally, this equates to roughly 5 to 7 million barrels of oil every day (over 250 million tonnes annually) dedicated solely to petrochemical and plastic manufacturing.
So yes we undoubtedly need to burn less of it, but we need to use less âconvenientâ packaging etc
Iâm concerned that we havenât seen the impact of the 430ppm we currently have in the atmosphere.
So the answer is probably both but thereâs an ever decreasing interest in burning less sadly.
I think weâre screwed short of an engineering miracle.
Yep. Capture is one thing but we do need an extraction answer. You wonder why all the worlds development aid isnât being put into a huge pot to research this. Surely the better answer.
I have been involved in a CCS project in Western Canada. It is kind of an ideal case. The geology is perfect, stable salt domes at a depth that provides a great deal of confidence about longevity. The source CO2 is very clean, output from natural gas processing where all of the âsourâ elements are stripped out upstream, and it is local. There isnât a town of 100k within 800km.
The project is stuck at the pilot phase because the carbon price needed to breakeven is somewhere around $140, still $45 above our carbon price. There are still so many better opportunities for abatement or terrestrial sequestration that are still not happening . There isnât a great deal of scope for R&D on it, because most of the technical challenges are quite well understood- pumping a gas like CO2 at scale is common.
Now, consider the UKâs case. Almost none of those ideal properties would hold for the vast majority of possible applications, which just means you need a carbon price of $200+
As for extraction, we have fantastic self-scaling self-replicating CO2 technology available. It is called a tree
Some how I doubt that Burnham has been on the phone to Trump, promising to move windmills in the North Sea. I suspect Trump is slightly distorting and intepreting things he have heard https://x.com/NotWoofers/status/2078869247837532334
Whilst I agree with both yours and @Noo_Noo concerns, I do find your focus on the UK and its emissions a bit WTF. It is almost a separate arguement which has not been evident in anyoneâs posting on this forum.
Yes the UK is guilty but how do we break this down? Is this not a result of its people? I mean has your life not benefited on the back of this? And in the same sense I suppose you and your ancestors are innocent and without blame for the UKâs historical Co2 emissions?
Its a pointless argument, and like you being pissed off, it pisses me off discussing and holding a âa historical decisionâ to account with hindsight.
I mean wasnât Labour built off the back of the Unions? Should we hold the Miners, steel workers, etc to account for being complicit in the Worlds current situation??
As I have said, I agree with your concerns regarding the Climate. I just donât know how we address this without major investment or a complete micro management of the public.
And maybe hypocritically, I do not see any reason why the UK should be expected to set/meet emission targets whilst the economy and its public are already struggling.
Also, i am curious as to why there has been increased focus on the UK and Burnham policies, whilst completely ignoring the âgolden bastionâ that is the EU and its decision to relax the rules on the ETS. I guess as the EU Climate Commissioner states, itâs okay because they are adopting a more business friendly approachâŚ
I am completely on board with your views on the climate and also being progressive in this industry. However, and I ask this as a question, could it potentially be wiser to invest in a carbon heavy sector like AI in order to achieve solutions quicker?
