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Brent Crude Traders Claim Proof BFOE Boys Rigged Market

Four longtime traders in the global oil market claim in a lawsuit that the prices for buying and selling crude are fixed — and that they can prove it. Some of the world’s biggest oil companies including BP Plc , Statoil ASA , and Royal Dutch Shell Plc conspired with Morgan Stanley and energy traders including Vitol Group to manipulate the closely watched spot prices for Brent crude oil for more than a decade, they allege. The North Sea Brent benchmark is used to price the majority of the world’s crude and helps determine where costs are headed for fuels including gasoline and heating oil. The case, which follows at least six other U.S. lawsuits alleging price-fixing in the Brent market, provides what appears to be the most detailed description yet of the alleged manipulations and lays out a possible road map for investigators. The traders who brought it […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Storm batters southern Britain, hitting flights, trains and power

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s strongest storm in a decade battered southern regions on Monday, forcing hundreds of flight cancellations, cutting power lines and disrupting the travel plans of millions of commuters. Winds of up to 99 miles per hour (160 km per hour) lashed southern England and Wales in the early hours of Monday, shutting down rail services in some areas during rush hour. Toppled trees crushed cars, damaged properties and flooding made some roads impassable in southern England. Storms were are also expected to hit parts of the Netherlands later on Monday, the Dutch Meteorological Institute said, and Schiphol airport told passengers to expect cancellations. About 40,000 customers were left without power in one of the worst storms to hit England since the 1987 "Great Storm" which killed 18 people in Britain and felled around 15 million trees. A 14-year old boy was missing after being swept out […]

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Dart's John McGoldrick says British energy sector needs shale gas

LONDON, Oct. 28 (UPI) — The British energy sector would suffer without the complementary benefits of shale natural gas, Dart Energy Chief Executive John McGoldrick said. McGoldrick said renewable energy resources like wind power don’t provide the same type of feedstock or raw materials needed to fuel power plants as natural gas does, London’s Daily Telegraph reported. “The logic is very simple. Unless you have got a competitive energy market, a competitive feedstock market, then by definition you are going to be uncompetitive and you lose jobs,” he said. French energy company GDF Suez announced last week it would pay $12 million to Dart, an Australian company, to acquire a 25 percent stake in 13 onshore licenses in the Bowland shale gas reserve area. In June, the British Geological Survey estimated the Bowland formation, located near Lancashire in northwest England, contains 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Dart’s John McGoldrick says British energy sector needs shale gas

LONDON, Oct. 28 (UPI) — The British energy sector would suffer without the complementary benefits of shale natural gas, Dart Energy Chief Executive John McGoldrick said. McGoldrick said renewable energy resources like wind power don’t provide the same type of feedstock or raw materials needed to fuel power plants as natural gas does, London’s Daily Telegraph reported. “The logic is very simple. Unless you have got a competitive energy market, a competitive feedstock market, then by definition you are going to be uncompetitive and you lose jobs,” he said. French energy company GDF Suez announced last week it would pay $12 million to Dart, an Australian company, to acquire a 25 percent stake in 13 onshore licenses in the Bowland shale gas reserve area. In June, the British Geological Survey estimated the Bowland formation, located near Lancashire in northwest England, contains 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Deadly Storms Batter Britain, Mainland Europe

Authorities across Western Europe began a giant cleanup operation Monday after one of the biggest storms in a decade pummeled first England and Wales and later parts of the Continent, killing at least 10 people and causing widespread travel chaos and power outages. Hurricane-force winds swept southe+rn England and uprooted trees across the region. British police officials said a 17-year-old girl was killed after a tree fell on her house in Edenbridge in the southeast of the country. A man was killed when a tree fell on his car in Watford, north of London, and another man and a woman were found dead in one of three collapsed houses in west London after a falling tree caused a gas explosion. French state-owned television reported that a woman was swept into the sea by waves and later washed up on the beach. Three people were killed by falling trees in […]

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Tech Talk – ten years is a long time to wait for power

Today the British Government are announcing the construction of the first new nuclear-powered electricity generating station in 20-years. The new plant, which will replace plants that will close will go up at Hinkley Point, and will be constructed by a French firm, with significant Chinese investment, and with a promised subsidy from the Government. It won’t, however, start producing electricity until 2023, and even then only if everything goes well. Euan Mearns has been pointing out some of the problems that the country faces as it closes existing power stations in order to meet environmental directives from the EU. The long-term supply of power at an affordable price is being increasingly challenged as the margin between demand and available supply shrinks. The leader of the Labor Party is promising that prices will be fixed by edict, an action that is unlikely to encourage investment at a time when it […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Tech Talk – ten years is a long time to wait for power

Today the British Government are announcing the construction of the first new nuclear-powered electricity generating station in 20-years. The new plant, which will replace plants that will close will go up at Hinkley Point, and will be constructed by a French firm, with significant Chinese investment, and with a promised subsidy from the Government. It won’t, however, start producing electricity until 2023, and even then only if everything goes well. Euan Mearns has been pointing out some of the problems that the country faces as it closes existing power stations in order to meet environmental directives from the EU. The long-term supply of power at an affordable price is being increasingly challenged as the margin between demand and available supply shrinks. The leader of the Labor Party is promising that prices will be fixed by edict, an action that is unlikely to encourage investment at a time when it […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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UK North Sea Oil Production Decline

The streets of Aberdeen are lined with Range Rovers, Porsches and Audis. New commercial property and residential developments are popping up all over and around the city. It is boom time in Europe’s oil capital. And yet UK North Sea oil production is in free fall, despite record high expenditure. Figure 1 In the period 1999 to 2008, sharply rising oil price more than outweighed plummeting production and the total value of that production kept rising. But with oil price now stabilised and range bound $100-$120 / barrel, a continued fall in production will begin to drag the value of that production downwards as capital and operating costs go up. Data from the BP statistical review of World Energy 2013 . Click on all charts to get a larger copy. Oil Field Decline and Decline Rates Production from most oil fields begins to decline within a few years of […]

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Burning up cash: are UK energy suppliers ripping us off?

Forget wicked stepmothers, ugly sisters, and even bank bosses. The heads of Britain’s energy companies are rapidly becoming the new villains for today’s hard-pressed consumers. Ed Miliband’s promise in September to freeze energy prices for 20 months if Labour comes to power in the next election resonated across the country – and put the Conservatives on the back foot. Where your money goes Former prime minister Sir John Major’s suggestion this week of a windfall tax on energy companies kept the pressure on the coalition government. The rising cost of electricity and gas has now become a key battleground ahead of the next election, expected in 2015. Mr Miliband’s promise struck a chord with the public precisely because its trust in whether energy companies provide a fair deal has fallen with each increase in domestic tariffs. Too often, bills appear to jump quickly when wholesale prices rise, but only […]

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Scottish wind farm expansion to result in 102 megawatts of power

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Oct. 25 (UPI) — The Scottish government said Friday it has agreed to plans to expand a wind farm so it will generate more than 100 megawatts of power for consumers. “The proposed extension to the wind farm, which will be developed by Mid Hill Wind Limited, is to have nine turbines, bringing the total number of turbines to 34 and have a maximum generating capacity of 102 megawatts,” the government said. “The farm could power the equivalent of more than 48,000 homes in the area.” The government said 52 of the 56 applications under consideration for new energy projects are for onshore wind developments. Scotland has one of the most ambitious renewable energy targets in the world. It set a goal of generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020. “Wind farms, like Mid Hill, provide considerable benefits to their local community and […]

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BP Ramps Up Drilling After Asset Sales, Legal Costs

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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Grangemouth future uncertain despite union climbdown – FT.com

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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UK agrees nuclear power deal with EDF – FT.com

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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Britain Looks to Fracking as North Sea Oil Dwindles

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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Fracking Opponents Find Lawyers Beat Superglue in Slowing Shale

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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UK could face power blackouts in winter 2014/15 – engineers

* 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 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple