The Peakist

Reliable energy supplies are set to rival military capability in their contribution to a state’s security, Tony Blair said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the formal opening of a gas pipeline between Norway and the UK, the prime minister noted that demands on the world’s energy resources were increasing, driven by the growth of countries such as China and India, while Britain was moving from near self-sufficiency in oil and gas to heavy dependence on imports. In little more than a decade Britain could be importing 80% of its gas, he said. (more…)

· Centrica contradicts regulator’s confidence
· Doubts over deliveries from mainland Europe

Terry Macalister
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian

Britain’s biggest gas supplier has warned that the country faces an “uncertain” winter of potential energy shortages, contradicting a more upbeat assessment last week from the energy watchdog, Ofgem.

Centrica, owner of British Gas, said new pipelines from Norway and the Netherlands coming on stream over the next couple of months would help, but the supply and demand situation would remain tough. (more…)

British Gas owner Centrica has said it plans to raise gas bills by as much as 12.4% for its 10.7 million customers.The firm’s 5.8 million electricity customers will also face a 9.4% increase in their bills from September.

British Gas said “unprecedented high wholesale energy costs” had made the price increases necessary.

News of the fresh round of price rises came as British Gas reported record losses of £143m during the first six months of the year. Strangely the conditions that have led to these increases have not affected the investors dividends which have in fact increased!
Earlier this week, rival EDF Energy announced it would be raising gas bills by 19% from next Tuesday, while Scottish Power said two weeks ago that it would also be increasing bills.

Tim Flannery debunks the idea that hydrogen is going to provide us with the fuel of the post-oil energy regime:

“TO PEOPLE IN THE PETROCHEMICAL and motor vehicle businesses, the solution to the climate change problem lies in ascending a metaphorical staircase of fuels, which, at each step, contains an ever diminishing amount of carbon.

Yesterday, the argument goes, it was coal, today it’s oil, and tomorrow it will be natural gas, with Nirvana being reached when the global economy makes the transition to hydrogen—a fuel that contains no carbon at all. (more…)

· Petrodollars give Putin weight on world stage
· America is ‘nervous and angry’, say observers
In the Kremlin on Thursday a little-known but powerful Russian official held court for the first time before foreign journalists with a very simple message: Russia is great and getting greater by the week. Sergei Sobyanin, a former governor of the oil-rich region of Tyumen, chief of staff to President Vladimir Putin, and one of the mightiest men in Russia, was enlarging on his leader’s state-of-the-nation speech 24 hours earlier in which Mr Putin identified the key to Russia’s progress in both human and military regeneration. (more…)

European energy consumers face further big rises in gas prices in the coming years because of acute shortages of Russian supplies and growing tensions between the Kremlin and EU, senior economists and a former Russian premier said Wednesday.
(more…)

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has signed a decree placing his country’s energy industry under state control.

In a May Day speech, he said foreign energy firms must agree to channel all their sales through the Bolivian state, or else leave the country.

He set the firms a six-month deadline, but the military and state energy officials have already started taking control of the oil fields.

(more…)

Gazprom plans to continue its triumphant conquest of the world. The Russian gas monopoly particularly intends to enter the British energy market. Gazprom may not wait for the completion of the North European Gas Pipeline and start buying large oil and gas companies on the British Isles.

(more…)

Unlike the Antarctic continent spread around the south pole, the Arctic has no formal international treaty to regulate activities. And while howling winds, drifting icebergs and months of freezing darkness kept prospecters at bay, there was little activity to regulate. But as global warming thaws the ocean’s icy layer, oil giants, shipping companies and even the odd enterprising tourist operator are casting their eyes towards the high north.

Last August a Russian vessel, the Akademik Fyodorov, became the first to reach the north pole without an icebreaker - one of seven ships to make it to the top of the world last year. This summer, Russian icebreakers aim to go one better and take paying guests, for £17,000 each. If the ice continues to thin and shrink as expected, then within a few decades cruise liners, container ships and tankers could all head over the pole, shaving thousands of miles off their voyages across the globe.

The biggest boom could be oil and gas. The US Geological Survey surprised some experts when it declared that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves lay under the Arctic Ocean. As the ice retreats, oil companies are scrambling to open a new frontier. (more…)

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian state gas monopoly OAO Gazprom has expressed interest in participating in the development of the world’s largest offshore gas field in Iran.

Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller met Iranian Ambassador Gholamreza Ansari on Tuesday to discuss a possible role for the Russian gas behemoth in a planned pipeline linking Iran, Pakistan and India and in the South Pars field, the company said in a statement late Tuesday.

Iran sits on the world’s second largest proven gas reserves after Russia. 

South Pars, which is believed to be the world’s largest gas field, is shared by Iran and Qatar. 

It is estimated to hold 7 percent of the world’s total gas and 38 percent of Iran’s reserves.  Source