Monthly Archives: March 2013

Gas prices – time to return to reality

March 26, 2013 11:09 am by Nick Butler
Ed Davey, secretary of state for DECC

Ed Davey, secretary of state at DECC, outside his ministry

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change is about to publish forecasts suggesting that gas prices could rise by up to 70 per cent over the next five years. This is scaremongering nonsense, and shows just how out of touch the Department is with the realities of the international energy market. Officials appear not to have consulted the industry or the traders. In reality the odds are that prices are just as likely to fall as to rise for three distinct reasons. Read more

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Posted in Gas, Policy, Renewables |

The emergence of the Russian Rockefeller

March 25, 2013 1:21 pm by Nick Butler

Vladmir Putin (left) and Igor Sechin (right)“We are about to see a new wave of consolidation in the world’s oil and gas business.” The words are not mine – they were spoken earlier this month by the President of what is now the world’s largest energy business. Igor Sechin is the President of Rosneft, the Russian company which with the completion of the takeover of TNK now produces over 4 million barrels of oil per day – more even than Exxon.

Rosneft is 70 per cent owned by the Russian state. Mr Sechin, who is famous for a spell in Soviet intelligence, is one of the most powerful men in Russia. John D. Rockefeller used every device possible to limit competition as he built Standard Oil and was eventually defeated by a cultural and legal resistance to monopoly. Mr Sechin has no such problems. The consolidation of Russia’s oil assets over the last decade has had the full support of the Kremlin. Read more

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Posted in Oil |

The unnecessary gas price spike

March 22, 2013 4:00 pm by Nick Butler

How do short term warnings of gas supply shortages, and a 50 per cent spike in same day delivery costs, sit with the general acceptance across the energy sector and government that gas will – and should be – the next big source of supply for power generation ? Read more

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Posted in Gas, Policy |

Cyprus – the Russian reaction

March 21, 2013 10:36 pm by Nick Butler

A week after the EU and the IMF announced their bail out plan for Cyprus, it is now clear how little consideration was given to the knock on implications of the proposals. Even if they are never implemented, the ideas put forward might change the behaviour of those with funds in banks across southern Europe. But the proposals will have still wider implications – not least for Europe’s energy security.

The Russian reaction to the proposed bank deposit levy had been predictably furious. Surely someone in Brussels or Berlin could have foreseen what would happen? Did no-one realise that a good proportion of the Russian money in Cyprus belonged to people rather close to the Kremlin? Read more

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Posted in Exploration, Gas, Politics, Resources |

Gas in Cyprus – how much of a guarantee?

March 17, 2013 8:21 pm by Nick Butler

The controversial bailout deal for Cyprus proposed by eurozone finance ministers has led President Nicos Anastasiades to promise investors who stay in the country after the compulsory forfeit of 9.9 per cent of their deposits that they will share in the country’s future wealth from natural gas.

In return for the forfeit they will be given shares in the banks and what are described in press reports as ” equity returns, guaranteed by future natural gas revenues”. Read more

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Posted in Gas |
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