Bishop Hill Greenery kills the environment part 20
Dec 3, 2013 Energy: gas Greens 
Photo: A Weir under CC. Click for link.Earlier this week it was reported that Stirling Council has decided to oppose Dart Energy's plans to expand their coalbed methane operations in Airth.
The project actually spans two separate council areas, and the other one - Falkirk - has yet to pronounce, so the project is still alive, but the decision is presumably a setback. The scaremongering campaign by Friends of the Earth Scotland and Frack-Off seems to have had an effect. Nevertheless, the council's decision is actually rather surprising, as Dart have their European headquarters in Stirling. If the company can't operate in their own back yard, one can't help but wonder if they might decide to move the business elsewhere, perhaps closer to their operations in England. I suppose though that Stirling councillors are unconcerned about the loss of an important employer in the area - this is Scotland after all.
Meanwhile, it is reported today that Ineos, the operators of the Grangemouth chemicals site, just up the road from Airth, are going to go ahead with their plans to supply their plant with a feedstock of LNG, shipped from the USA.
So we can see that Friends of the Earth (and the other groups that claim to be concerned about the environment) have managed to work things so that instead of gas being sourced locally it will be shipped halfway round the world.
This will, apparently, help to 'save the planet'.
Reader Comments (35)
FoE cannot see beyond the end of their green noses (which grow ever longer) and they haven't heard of the law of unintended consequences.
The Ineos point is a very salient one, and has been missed ( probably deliberately) by the MSM in its reporting of the Grangemouth affair. I am always amazed at the way environmentalism is skewed in the local context. This summer I had the privilege to witness the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at the end of the visit I was given a questionnaire to complete, of which the final question concerned the sustainability of the tourist operation. I replied that, though very commendable, it was hardly carbon neutral or sustainable in the green sense since everyone on the boat had flown 12,000 miles to finance it. Logic or reality rarely enters the green mind, unless there is a grant at the end of it.
Without spending time going to look... - I do wonder what level of due diligence the Councillors used to arrive at their decision and what role conflicted officials played in serving up the matter to a vote.
Pound to a pinch of whatever the answers will be exasperating :-) Every council in the country has "climate change pixies" on the payroll.
"So we can see that Friends of the Earth (and the other groups that claim to be concerned about the environment) have managed to work things so that instead of gas being sourced locally it will be shipped halfway round the world.
This will, apparently, help to 'save the planet'."
The irony- you couldn't make it up.
What sort of parallel universe do these dramagreens inhabit?
In addition to all the other characteristics that we have itemised over time, one item that is a pre-requisite for membership of any eco-activist organisation is tunnel vision, failing which a pair of blinkers will suffice.
I'm surprised at Stirling Council, however. I thought that most Scottish councillors these days — even Labour ones in the Central Belt — were no longer drawn from the hard-of-thinking tendency. I well remember an incident 20 years ago in a town not 50 miles from Stirling when a local businessman was let off the hook when the Section 50 (as it then was) agreement which had been proposed by the Conservative members was voted down by every Labour councillor. I was told later (off the record, worse luck!) that they couldn't go against the decision of the group meeting and anyway they couldn't be seen to be supporting a Conservative motion. I really thought such days had gone.
Excellent point Andrew, pity of it is that, it cannot be more widely expressed.
As a blogger 'here' on another thread pointed out yesterday - we must start using FoE, Greenpeace tactics to get our [more cogent] points across.
I was interested to notice that Eric Joyce, the Falkirk MP is very much in favour of the project. As he put it: "I’ve had 9 letters from constituents complaining about the proposed Coal Bed Methane (CBM) project at Airth. At the same time, I’ve had 420 letters objecting to high fuel and energy prices."
Funny that locals just can't seem to connect the two issues. Too much disinformation from local journalists it seems. With luddite attitudes like this there would have been no industrial revolution in the first place.
Remember the days when the Labour Party, for all its faults, could claim to be the party of the working man and woman? Remember when the evils of unemployment were uppermost in the minds of Labour politicians?
Nowadays Labour wants the country to de-industrialise. Never mind, the unemployed will all be able to get jobs in the public sector as climate change officers. Such jobs seem to be pretty safe. I have seen many TV reports on local government cuts and read many newspaper articles on the same subject, but I don't recall reading about redundancies in climate change departments.
Have I missed something?
The stupidity on display from these eco terrorists is simply breath taking. Groups like FoE and Greenpeace have no interest whatsoever in protecting the environment. They are simply shills for the wind and solar industry, which itself is creating fuel poverty on a massive scale, by sucking up vast subsidies.
FoE said, when the appeal was originally lodged "This is a clear sign that Dart is so desperate for a decision that it is unwilling to let the proper democratic processes take place within the councils". This is strange, because we get lots of appeals against wind turbine proposals before the local councils get to make their democratic decision and I've yet to see any example of FoE making a comment about letting the democratic process take place. In fact I will be at a local council meeting tomorrow, where the council will be deciding whether it would have allowed or refused a single wind turbine application, but 3 days before it was due to decide, the developer lodged an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. In fact wind turbine developers are so dismissive of the democratic process that they automatically lodge an appeal whenever a wind turbine application is refused. I've never yet seen a peep out of FoE or any other dramagreen organisation when the democratic process is bypassed by wind developers.
There may be a little more to this.
Ineos are planning to import ethane for their ethylene cracker. Coalbed methane - which Dart are looking to exploit nearby - is of no use to the cracker so this decision has no direct bearing on Ineos' operation. While it is likely that the UK's large shale potential will include some ethane, we are a long way from any certainty on that.
However cheap local methane would be very attractive for the power station adjoining the Ineos complex.
The second interesting point is that the supply of gas products from the North Sea (piped to a terminal next door) is declining so the cracker can only run at 50% capacity. Ineos' commitment to a 15-year import deal rather suggests that they are not optimistic about a reversal of that decline - or of any imminent new source from UK shale.
Lastly their comment that the imported ethane will be 50% cheaper shows that the N. Sea source is probably still linked to oil prices. So that supplier (I think the main source is the Forties field) will have to find another customer.
Shouldn't that be Greenery kills the environment part XX, for the double-cross?
according to this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10489613/US-shale-gas-plan-to-make-Grangemouth-profitable.html
its ethane that is being imported! (removed from wet gas)
the gas you are refering to is probably dry gas
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
The Bishop: 'This will, apparently, help to 'save the planet'.' Of course. Think Green. 'It' will put the cost of energy up - which will mean less will be used which means that people will be colder and die younger - so the population will reduce and the planet edged towards salvation.
Greenpeace, FoE, ZDB, Chandra et al will be hugging themselves.
@ Roy
Remember the days when the Labour Party, for all its faults, could claim to be the party of the working man and woman?
There was a pretty good case for the Labour Party's arguments in the 1920s, when you had people at one end of the spectrum enjoying great wealth and others in third-world poverty. There seems much less point to Labour now, when we have poor so wealthy that the world wants to immigrate here to sign on.
@ John B
Groups like FoE and Greenpeace have no interest whatsoever in protecting the environment.
It's worse than that. In London I am seeing Greenpeace ads all over the Tube begging for donations to save the Arctic ecofascists who are in jail in Russia. I'd like to see these people handed exemplary sentences of course but the issue is that as well as objecting to drilling in the Arctic they actually object it to anywhere at all. I do not understand why anyone listens to such abject buffoons.
What I don't understand is why these 'Dramagreens' even get a seat at the table. Pressure groups that break the law when it suits them should not be an inclusive part of the democratic process.
How on earth did it come to this?
Is the Grangemouth LNG actually coming from the USA? I ask because various people question whether the USA will export LNG and if the Shale Gas from the States will affect EU prices. If it is coming from the America then presumably that is the lowest cost source, under cutting supplies from Russia? Will this have any noticable affect on UK gas prices, probably not but an interesting development none the less.
The Inoes plant will import ethane from the US. The US is awash in Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) such as ethane since fracking was successful. NGLs trade at ~75% price of Brent in the UK. The discount is higer in the US. That is working with a US benchmark such as WTI that is in itself trading at ~$15/bbl discout to Brent.
There are a number of recent announcements of big investments in Texas of plants such as ethylene crackers that use ethane as feedstock, eg Dow Chemicals, Oxychem. European plants can't compete with this cheap feedstock.
Unconventional fracking will produce some mix of gas, NGLs and crude. Crude is the prize.
Phillip Bratby
"and they haven't heard of the law of unintended consequences."
I think a lot of their consequences are totally intended.
Trefjon
"Logic or reality rarely enters the green mind, unless there is a grant at the end of it."
You are right of course, but since the people handing out the grants are from the same mindset, I am not sure they need logic or reality at all.
Bish says: "The scaremongering campaign by Friends of the Earth Scotland and Frack-Off seems to have had an effect"
Less than 24 hours after I posted my "Big Lie" comment on the Green Fairies thread, here we are again.
Make a noise, make a stink, win concessions. Rinse. Repeat. THE TRUTH DOES NOT MATTER. This is Alinskyite Standard Operating Procedure.
While we sit at our keyboards harrumphing and tut-tutting, the minuscule number of Radicals are out there picketing drill sites, organising sit-ins at shops and parading giant rats up and down outside of the homes of directors. And they are winning. Despite the fact that we have had NO WARMING FOR 17 YEARS. Why? Because they demand attention and demand concessions. We don't. So they win and we lose, and we sit around and bitch about how our opponents' tactics are jolly well not cricket.
Our industry is crumbling under the cost of artificially expensive energy. Our poor are condemned to spend the winter in freezing cold houses, and some of them die. And the population is fobbed off with fairy stories about how it's all the fault of GreedyEnergyCompanies. Yet no-one protests this. I mean REALLY protests.
You want to play the reasonable guy with Radicals? Prepare to to give concessions. If they ask for a mile and you give an inch, they'll soon be back again with the same tactics. And sooner or later, a whole bunch of inches will add up to a mile anyway. And that's how we are where we are today. The playground bully and the school pussy.
Justice4 etc - I think that you need to read a bit of history.
It is simply not true that English (or Scottish, Welsh or Irish) working class people's concerns ceased to be of concern after the 1920s.
As a danged furriner, I am reluctant to go further here. I might mention a look at mortality rates, but otherwise my lips are sealed, unless asked otherwise by locals.
Except to ask why history is so easily forgotten and dismissed.
Johanna - agreed. My mother-in-law trained as a nurse in 1950s Glasgow. She said it was not unheard of for babies to arrive at the hospital without lips - because they had been eaten by rats. Housing conditions were very poor then, and not just in the urban slums. Rural deprivation was also a real problem, when my late elderly neighbour was a child in the late thirties, his mother would send him (because he was the youngest) along to the abattoir at the end of the day, to ask for a cup of blood. This, mixed with some oats was the main meal of the day for him and his 5 siblings. But nowadays the welfare state has gone too far. One also has to distinguish between the Labour Party, and the Parliamentary Labour Party, which often have very different agendas.
Pax Power Station all over again, the logic of an asylum. On second thoughts no that insults the residence of .
SandyS. Good question:
"-The wave of new ethylene plants being built in the US could tighten ethane supplies in the country, preventing future deals similar to the one that INEOS struck for its complex at Grangemouth, Scotland, according to petrochemical consultants.
INEOS plans to import ethane from the US to feed its Grangemouth cracker as part of a survival plan to keep the complex running.
Under the plan, the union agreed to concessions, while the UK and Scottish governments agreed to help fund upgrades that would allow the complex to import and store ethane from the US.
INEOS has already reached a 15-year agreement to ship ethane from the US east coast to its European crackers. Italy-based Versalis and Austria’s Borealis are also considering ethane imports.
However, the US might not have the ethane to spare."
http://www.icis.com/Articles/2013/10/28/9719637/us-ethane-demand-may-prevent-a-repeat-of-grangemouth.html
You are right, AngusPangus (Dec 3, 2013 at 2:16 PM), the quandary we are in is, how can we make our voice heard above those of the
Radic..(hey! what do you think you are doing?) eco-loony liars without resorting to their base tactics?I have tried writing to my MP, to find that I might as well bash my head against a brick wall; whatever argument I give, whatever facts I offer, the enviro-loons have beaten me to it, and already poisoned a not-very-large mind with their lies.
We cannot make our voices be heard as we are not well organised, do not have a catchy brand name or logo and most of us have daytime jobs too I expect. The fact that we love our planet as much as the rest - in fact more so I expect - is neither here nor there. A true capitalist would pay someone to do all this for him/her. I wonder if Bob Ward is available?
All we can truly strive for is to repeat the FACTS over and over and over again to as wide an audience as we can muster. Eventually, the truth will out, and those who have tried to conceal it will pay the price they have tried to inflict upon all of us. Just look back in history to see that this is not the first such event of mass-deception, to eventually fall on the sword of truth; there must be similar stories throughout history… erm, aren’t there?
@ Athelstan: "As a blogger 'here' on another thread pointed out yesterday - we must start using FoE, Greenpeace tactics to get our [more cogent] points across."
Stand for election. We can have 'em out via the ballot box. Democracy, they never expected that one. They don't like it up 'em.
FarleyR, RR et al, too true. My MP is Greg Barker, so my missives never get very far. On the plus side, his unassailable majority was actually decreased at the 2010 election, totally against the national trend, and partly due to an independent who stood on a low tax, green policies are bollox etc agenda similar to UKIP's (who now have a local presence).
I live in the heart of the Sussex countryside and am as keen as anyone on keeping landfill to a minimum - whilst not encouraging flytipping - yet another unintended consequence - and pollution in general to be reduced. I do indeed work daytimes, running my own business with a partner providing financial data to banks. Much that I'd love to picket Greenpeace HQ, or even Davey's house, I'm not entirely sure if I'd be as lightly treated as Caroline Lucas at Balcombe, which could threaten the business and both families. Regrettably, the great unwashed people with time on their hands seem to be on the other side of the argument. Of course, this is why the UKIP vote may be so understated, and why their voters are naively caricatured as being the older generation - because there are many, many people like me. I hope.
Roy and Justice4Rinka
Roy said "remember the days when the Labour Party, for all its faults, could claim to be the party of the working man and woman? "
Yes I totally agree with your sentiments, they talk the talk, but walk a completely different route - often oblivious to the trail of damage.
One of my great uncles was on the National Committee ( or whatever it was called) of the Labour Party in the 1920s and early 30s. I only met him a couple of times late in his life, but as he was an intelligent working man and just wanted a fairer country for workers, I believe he would take an axe to the rich Fabians who have run the party for the last couple of decades.
I upset someone only today by pointing out that the reason many people in the UK are struggling with a cost of living crisis can be directly traced to a government that allowed a doubling (and even trebling in some areas) of house prices in one decade - due to unregulated lending (supported or at least not opposed by the Tories). The very basics of somewhere to live has been driven beyond a large %age of the population.
That a party who supposedly, and rightly, should be protecting the hard working, and often relatively low paid, people of this country, ended up being the working persons worst enemy is amazing. The fact that they made idle people with families better off than many hard working families is the biggest betrayal of Labour's principles. People like Bevan, Morrison, and Atlee hated the Tories, yes - but they also had no time for the work-shy at all. Those who could not keep or get work would be rightly supported, but not those who didn't want to work.
If you read Nye Bevan's speeches from the early days of the welfare state you find that he warned against it turning out as it has - welfare dependency . If he could have come back in 2010, Brown, Blair, Miliband and Balls probably think he would have loved it - I reckon he would have been apoplectic with rage, especially when he saw the millions some Labour politicians have made (just by being politicians - insert your own choice of name), and the problems created by them.
I always say NuLabour - the enemy of the working people.
As for the ConDem cretins - Don't get me started.
You can hear this windmill... http://www.wimp.com/windmillstorm/
"So we can see that Friends of the Earth (and the other groups that claim to be concerned about the environment) have managed to work things so that instead of gas being sourced locally it will be shipped halfway round the world."
This is exactly the point that I came to at the Spectator event "Let's get Fracking" on Monday.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/constancewatson/2013/12/fracking-debate-lets-peak-into-this-pandoras-box/
The panel against fracking, Green Party, FoE, and Greenpeace, missed the point that moving to gas fired electricity generation is a requirement for a high penetration of windpower and solar renewables. Gas power generation can be ramped up and down quickly to match the intermittent nature of renewables, which neither coal nor nuclear can do. The more renewables on the grid the more we need to substitute gas for other conventional power sources. Securing our gas supplies therefore also secures the move to renewables. What better than to exploit the gas resources under our feet, rather than importing all the way from Russia or the Middle East?
I'd hate to spoil the usual suspects having the usual fun on this thread but it might be an idea to discover what the grounds for Stirling's propsed refusal are. The cited article doesn't say.
I'm given to understand that Dart Energy has been involved in some local wind power projects. If the company behaves in as cavalier a fashion at Airth as I'm led to believe it has towards local communities involved in the other projects, the planners may have a point. Do we know if the councillors were accepting or over-turning the recommendation of the planners?
Dave B
Dart have tweeted that you are mistaken.
I don't remember exactly but I think I read article that says ethane has is being imported! Anyways Thanks for sharing, It guess I need to brush my knowledge before jumping into any conclusion. That is the best thing I can do right now!