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THE UK IS ABOUT TO RUN OUT OF FUEL
The featured report in the box at the top of today's BBC daily email news bulletin (UK edition 10:00 GMT) carried an alarming headline - "Explosive issue: Is the UK about to run out of cheap natural gas supplies?"
The real concern is not the price of oil and gas, it is the unavoidable fact that the world's fuel supply is about to run out. Experts are unanimous about the urgency of adopting alternative energy sources, but the influence of oil money on governments around the world will not allow it.
In a few years time, when the life blood of Western civilization is no longer readily available, it will be to late to adapt. The strong nations will take fuel from the weak nations in a futile final struggle for survival. But the writing is on the wall, and the collapse of civilization as we know it is inevitable.
The oil wars have already begun.
SOURCE
BBC News, Growing concern over gas imports", 22 January 2004.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3401083.stm ]
Oil is an emotive subject. Countries are accused of starting wars because of it, and when turned into petrol or diesel it powers the great internal combustion engine.
From convertibles cruising down Hollywood Boulevard, to tanks rumbling into Iraq, or an ambulance racing across London, oil literally drives the world.
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Yet today gas has never been more vital to the UK's energy needs, and never more of a possible future strategic and political concern.
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Now gas is the UK's main source of electricity generation, with 39% of the market, compared to a share of less than 1% in 1990, according to official industry figures.
The UK is now the world's third largest consumer of natural gas, after the US and Russia.
Which brings us to the current reality. Britain is now running out of its own supplies of natural gas.
The North Sea reserves are drying up (some estimate by 2011), meaning we are going to have to start importing more and more of the stuff.
And while plans are in hand to increase import facilities - such as the creation of additional pipelines, and new port facilities to import gas in liquid form - some key strategic uncertainties remain, such as exactly which countries we can get the gas from.
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"Gas may not make the headlines like oil, for the simple fact that it does not drive vehicles, but both will eventually run out..."
FURTHER READING
BBC Two, "If... The Lights Went Out", 9 PM, Wed, 10 Mar 04.
[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?filename=20040310/20040310_2100_4224_15945_60 ]
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The scenario is fictional, but the interviews and the issues are real. If... is a new series of drama documentaries that takes the major issues of the day and projects them into the near future. Interweaving inventive storytelling and rigorous journalism, and drawing on evidence and predictions from internationally respected experts and commentators, If... offers an authoritative reflection on the decisions being made in contemporary Britain today.
If The Lights Go Out is set in the winter of 2010 and Britain is struggling to generate enough electricity to cope with demand. It paints a scenario of a future in which the south-east of England is plunged into darkness. Householders are left with no water or electricity, traffic is gridlocked, tube trains are stranded underground and airports closed.
BBC News, "MoD 'threatening UK energy plans'", 1 March 2004.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3494200.stm ]
The Royal Society says the Ministry of Defence is jeopardising the development of the UK's renewable energy potential.
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The society says wind energy is expected to make a significant contribution to the government's "ambitious" target of generating 10% of the UK's electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
But it says figures from the British Wind Energy Association show the MoD objected to 48% of applications to build land-based wind farms last year, and 34% in 2002, because of concerns they could interfere with the radars.
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LINKS
The Insider, "World's oil will run out in 10 years", 19 October 2003.
[ http://www.theinsider.org/mailing/article.asp?id=0423 ]
The Debate - "The Oil Wars have Begun"
[ http://www.thedebate.org ]
"The Insider" mailing list article, 22 January 2004.
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