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Russian Gas


Bill

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43 minutes ago, Observer II said:

Believe everyone and his dog are still importing Russian gas, including the US.    :rolleyes:

Whilst the UK dockers refuse to offload one which would of provided the UK with gas for 12 days. 

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I was as surprised as anyone to hear that the USA is one of the biggest users of Russian gas and they can’t afford to cut it off without their economy collapsing. For years, the US has had cheap oil and gas and developed into a society where the words energy crisis has no meaning. We could say Putin has the US over a barrel on this one because if they cut off this supply, the fallout would be devastating. As much as the American people say they support the Ukraine, that support only exists while the prices at the pumps remains low.

 

 

Bill 😊

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3 hours ago, Observer II said:

Thought the Yanks were self sufficient in energy, but prefer to use up everyone else's resources, while saving their own for the big day when they run out?    8)

 

U.S. Natural Gas Imports by Country (eia.gov)

Natural Gas – Imports and Exports - Open Government Portal (canada.ca)

 

US does not import gas from Russia according to official figures.

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Yes, it looks like either I heard it wrong, or the reporting wasn’t clear enough. It’s oil and petrol products that it still imports at about 10% but for a country that is so focused on the price at the pumps, cutting this off would have serious implications. While I was there, existing record-breaking petrol prices were one of the main talking points on the news channels with many saying it can’t go on like this. It’s still on average only half the price that we pay for it but it used to be a lot cheaper.

 

 

Bill 😊

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I finally received my energy monitor for my solar panel late yesterday, a nice piece of kit that shows exactly how much powers coming out of the thing with a running total that’ll show the power saved over time. I won’t be booking another holiday on the strength of today’s performance though as it’s clocked up just 9p. Better than a kick in the pants I suppose and not bad for a largely overcast day with the panel in a less than ideal location, but even at this very low rate, it’ll still save me £33 a year. I’m confident though with some longer and sunnier days, the savings will be substantial and certainly enough to make the payback time for this small-scale setup to be close to my target of a year.

Another thing I’m trying is some cleaver radiator valves that rather than just control the temperature, can be programmed to adjust or completely shut off at specific times of the day. The rational for this is that I have three bedrooms that tend to be permanently heated unless I remember to go round turning them down each day, then remembering to turn them back up just before bedtime. Most of the time I forget but then again, my wife turns them on to dry the washing and always forgets to turn them off. Now I can program them to work for just an hour twice a day or leave them on longer on specific wash days. At about £25 a time, it’s hard to see that these won’t be effective at considerably reducing my gas consumption.

 

Bill 😊

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But it won't just be heating Bill; it's petrol too.  Apparently petroleum is used in the fertiliser process and a shortage will affect food supply and costs.   Read somewhere that GE are producing mini nuclear reactors, which with a return to coal, N/sea oil & gas, and tidal and hydro.; should get us to energy self sufficiency.     :unsure:

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Yep, but that’s waiting for other people to do something about the problem. My little effort won’t make Putin lose any sleep but at least it might help protect me from the worst effects of all this. As they say, nothing like a war to get people of their backsides and start changing their ways.

 

Bill 😊

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Policies integral to the existence and functioning of the State are the responsibility of Government.   Unfortunately, because of our democratic system, we have Governments that only have a 5 year window to deliver their manifestoes, so any long term requirements get kicked into the long grass and altered if another Party takes over.   The cost of living crisis would have happened in any case, the Ukraine saga has merely intensified it.   We've even got panick buying already, though not toilet paper this time, but iodine tablets to ward off radiation sickness !    There's numerous pods on youtube, advising what items you need to stock up on to survive a nuclear war !    :rolleyes:

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Cuban crisis, the sequel.

Time to unseal all those nuclear bunkers and give them an airing out just in case eh.

I remember all those protester years ago against nuclear power stations.

Wonder if they are the ones now advocating nuclear power as a clean energy source......🤔

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Don't think so Sid, they'll be the ones arguing for more wind farms and solar panels, which don't provide a consistent energy supply.   :rolleyes:  According to Jeff Taylor,  the eco-warriors are preparing for a mass demo in April;  blocking our petrol terminals and the streets of  London again, creating max disruption, while our woke Police force look on and protect them from an irate public.   :rolleyes:

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Bill, I'm not ruling out wind and solar, but we shouldn't be putting all our eggs in one basket;  aside from coal & oil, and nuclear (which I'm a bit wary of), and fracking (which should be a non-starter imo);   there's tidal,  barriers across all our estuaries, which can provide road crossing points and help control flooding for instance.  On the reduced usage side of the equation, the protesters are right in principle, we should be embarking on fully insulated housing, with subsidies for less well off owners.   It's not rocket science, and if they can afford £5million a day to house ILLEGAL migrants, I'm sure they can start looking after the indigenous Brits.  for a change.  :unsure:

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All good stuff Obs, and in a perfect world and especially living on an island, renewables such as tidal barriers make a lot of sense, however they’re not so quick to get up and running and we have the shortage problems right now. Windmills and solar farms on the other hand are cheaper and relatively quick to bring into service so in the here and now we’re likely to see more sustained growth in this area.

Clearly, they’re not as reliable as the more conventional supplies but this is balanced to some extent by the link to the wider European grid because somewhere the sun and wind will be available. Like it or not, this unreliable source will continue to be developed further and become our primary source of power, with the gas fired stations acting solely as an emergency backup.

By that time, the powers that be might have finally finished their endless planning objections and debates on just where to locate your tidal barrage.  

 

Bill 😊

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3 minutes ago, Observer II said:

We're talking about energy self sufficiency and quickly - that means fossil ands nuclear,  until longer term options become available - despite the planning process.   :unsure:

Nuclear is not fast so it is just fossil fuels then. My heating system will not work with a heat pump, even if they were in volume production, so what we need is Gas and Gas and Gas..... Move over anti-frackers and Sturgeon.

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As of this minute we have an electricity demand of a little over 35GW. The entire capacity of the interconnectors into the UK is only 9GW if we didn't have the 11GW of wind it couldn't be replaced by wind from somewhere else. This is the very same error as not repairing the Rough gas storage because we could just import the extra from elsewhere, then China bought up most of the Tanker loads of LPG and Russia invaded Ukraine. If your capacity is not in-territory it is going to be dark and cold at some point.

 

PS Approximately 19% of UK Natural Gas Consumption at the same time was devoted to Electricity Production at an output rate of just 9GW

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Deep drilling for geothermal is simply a a relatively small deep hole in the ground or series of holes and there's no way on earth that that should cause an earthquake. There's no fracking action and this is most likely just some kind of press sensationalism. Most likely just vibrations from the drilling process. 

Oh and I'm sure I read somewhere that there are plans in place to double the capacity of the interconnectors within the next eight years and hopefully by then we'll be exporting more power than we bring in.

 

Bill  :)

 

 

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15 hours ago, Bill said:

Deep drilling for geothermal is simply a a relatively small deep hole in the ground or series of holes and there's no way on earth that that should cause an earthquake. There's no fracking action and this is most likely just some kind of press sensationalism. Most likely just vibrations from the drilling process. 

Oh and I'm sure I read somewhere that there are plans in place to double the capacity of the interconnectors within the next eight years and hopefully by then we'll be exporting more power than we bring in.

 

Bill  :)

 

 

We need to be self-sufficient in energy supply. That is the only way to avoid external shocks and make UK prices immune from foreign prices. Essentially we must plan to only bring in power when there is no alternative and then in limited quantities. Exporting more than we bring in is essential for taking control. We have failed to grasp this since Blair came to power, a wasted 25 years.

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I’m not sure how far we can go to isolate ourselves from the effects of global prices. There’s still plenty of oil and gas in the North Sea but we’ve used up the stuff that’s easy to get out so now it’s cheaper to import it. I was the same with coal, we still had plenty but it was cheaper to close the mines and bring it half way round the world.  

 

Bill 😊

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Cost has been the main driver for energy importation,  labour costs etc are cheap; so when Maggie closed down our pits and imported Polish coal we were goosed, hundreds of years of coal had to remain underground.  Then came Bliar who let in cheap Polish and EU labour, again all based on cost savings rather than National long term economic security.   As I've said; until we have Governments that can think and plan beyond a 30yr time frame, we'll forever bump from one crisis to the next.   😠

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