Category: United Kingdom

LONDON—Three years after BP PLC’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, the oil company is still fighting to keep damage claims and regulatory fines in check. But outside the courtroom, BP is spending to leave behind one of the biggest retrenchments in its 100-plus-year history. Chief Executive Bob Dudley has said the company has increased its investment in exploration. BP projects annual capital spending over the next several years to be $24 billion to $27 billion—at least 25% higher than 2011 levels as the company pours cash into projects in Angola, Azerbaijan, Indonesia and elsewhere. Company executives say the spending is part of an effort to recover from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill—and get back to its mission of finding and pumping oil. BP’s turnaround will be challenging. The oil industry as a whole is struggling to find new deposits to replace what it pumps. At the same time, […]

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Unite general secretary Len McCluskey outside the Grangemouth plant on Thursday ©Getty Unite general secretary Len McCluskey outside the Grangemouth plant on Thursday The future of the Grangemouth refinery and petrochemical plant was hanging in the balance on Thursday night despite the Unite union accepting demands for a pay freeze and changes in working conditions. Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary, said after talks with management that the union had accepted “warts and all” the Ineos demands in an attempt to save Scotland’s most important industrial complex from closure. The climbdown, a significant defeat for the union, came less than a day after Ineos said it would shut the petrochemical plant at the complex, with the loss of 800 jobs and review the future of the refinery. However, it remained unclear on Thursday night whether Jim Ratcliffe, chairman and main shareholder of Ineos, would drop the closure plan or reopen […]

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University of Leicester undated handout photo of the skull of the skeleton found at the Grey Friars excavation in Leicester, potentially that of King Richard III. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Monday February 4, 2013. The photo was released by the University of Leicester ahead of today’s announcement about the identity of the skeleton found underneath Leicester’s Greyfriars car park last September. See PA story HISTORY Richard. Photo credit should read: University of Leicester/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. ©Getty Hinkley Point power station in Somerset The UK government has struck a deal with the French utility EDF to build the country’s first new nuclear plant in a generation. The agreement was reached after the government guaranteed a price […]

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BARTON, England — Driving down a bumpy country road in northwest England, one comes upon a bare patch the size of a soccer field at the edge of a peat bog. Workers are erecting a security fence and unrolling watertight film to protect the soil from chemical contamination. Near the middle is a big rectangular hole where a drilling rig will go. Inauspicious as it may look, what happens on this patch of ground in the coming months could help determine the future of Britain’s, and even Europe’s, approach to shale gas. The energy source has made the United States, for one, suddenly self-sufficient in natural gas, but it raises environmental concerns that have made many countries on this side the Atlantic dead set against it. Shale gas is extracted by the technique known as hydraulic fracturing — or fracking, the harsh-sounding word that can stir the passions of […]

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Campaigners desperate to prevent the birth of a U.K. shale gas industry have glued themselves to walls, barricaded country lanes and climbed drill rigs. Yet their most potent weapon is more prosaic: lawyers. Anti-shale groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are using environmental and property law to challenge drilling at every turn, and it’s working. Production is now likely to start in 2018, two years later than originally envisaged, partly because getting permission to explore has been so slow, said John Williams , senior principal at Poyry Plc, an energy consultant in Oxford. The delay is frustrating Prime Minister David Cameron ’s goal of boosting economic growth and cutting energy prices through developing shale resources. For the protesters, no good can come from hydraulic fracturing, the process that uses a mix of pressurized water and chemicals to prise fuel out of shale rock. They say it pollutes […]

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* Power system under strain especially in winter 2014/15 * Government should speed up power market reform – report LONDON Oct 17 (Reuters) – Britain could see widespread power blackouts during next year’s winter if a series of unforeseen events such as a cold snap or unplanned station outages occurs simultaneously, a report for an advisory body to the prime minister warned on Thursday. Britain’s power capacity margin, which is the production capacity available above demand levels, is expected to be dangerously low in the winter of 2014/15, an engineering report for the Council for Science and Technology said. Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem and network operator National Grid have also warned of shrinking margins and in response are creating tools aimed at reducing peak demand. "Although the electricity supply is expected to be sufficient to cover predicted levels of demand, it is likely to stretch the system close to […]

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