if russia turns off

[Deleted User]

People cared enough in 1983 to to send a flotilla of RN and ‘make do’ ships 8500 miles to repel the Argentinians from the Falkland Islands. Two hundred and fifty five people gave up their lives in the process. It was argued afterwards that it would have been cheaper to relocate all the Islanders to Sussex and give them a £1M each to set up in this Country. But that wasn’t the point.

History shows that we need to stand up to aggressor nations. If we don’t, then they feel emboldened to go a lot further than their original intentions. Ukraine now, then Poland: Germany next. 

Don’t forget that Nations from across the World came to our defence in WW2. They didn’t need to but they concluded that is was the only way to restore World peace. Had they not done so, then the UK would be a very different country to what it is today. We would have lost the War.

If Russia attacks a NATO member, then the UK is at General War whether we like it or not. The present solution of supporting Ukrainians with weapons, and tightening the financial noose around Russia is far from perfect, but short of a full NATO intervention at sea; in the air, and on the ground it is better than nothing.

I get it that people are hurting, and high energy prices after Covid is the last thing we need. Without question, the Government needs to offer more short-term financial support, but those who advocate appeasement to get oil and gas prices down really do need to look at the bigger strategic picture. 

Alnat1

At least it has focused minds in Europe and made us realise that the transition away from gas needs to happen right now.

The can has been kicked into a cul-de-sac and the choice is to stop kicking it or turn around and go backwards.

MattMattMattUK

Mstty said:

The question is how much do the wider public care?

When their energy bills are potentially doubling between now and Jan 2023 at what point do they not care about what is going on 3000 miles away.

I know some who care and some who are entirely selfish. Personally I would rather power cuts than giving in to Putin, but there are a group who are fully in favour of full capitulation. 

Mstty said:

The public are a fickle bunch and when it starts to severely impact their lives. On the back of covid, inflation, energy crisis etc many will talk a good game about Ukraine but what's important to them is what's not in their wallet/purse/bank.

Most of the public are only willing to see the short term impact of things, giving in to Putin will cost us all a lot more in the long run, the same as climate change, they claim that they care, but they want it to be other people who eat less meat, who fly less, who don't buy new clothes or new shiny phones every year, they are not prepared to moderate their own behaviour. 

The government plan if there are power shortages is to cut industrial usage first, then move on to domestic, but that is the wrong way around. Industry/commercial should be supported first so that jobs are not lost and tax revenues stay steady, domestically people will be fine with rolling blackouts, rather than watching TV they can read a book, they can cook dinner at a different time, they can do their washing in the middle of the day not at 18:00 etc. If/when there are power cuts the public should have the consequences explained to them of industrial power cuts vs residential and residential cuts should be made first. 

MattMattMattUK

[Deleted User] said:

If Russia attacks a NATO member, then the UK is at General War whether we like it or not. The present solution of supporting Ukrainians with weapons, and tightening the financial noose around Russia is far from perfect, but short of a full NATO intervention at sea; in the air, and on the ground it is better than nothing.

I really hope that Russia/Putin is not stupid enough to attack a NATO country, but Putin is certainly demonstrating that he is far from rational at the moment. If he does there is probably a fair chance we will end up with nuclear war not general war, but either way keeping the lights on will be the least of our worries. 

peter_the_piper

They should be starting with fracking to help our gas supply.  Until we have alternative supplies of fuel (hydrogen etc)there is really no reason not to use oil/gas/coal and nuclear.

macman

What we could produce from fracking in the UK is negligible.

Ultrasonic

peter_the_piper said:

They should be starting with fracking to help our gas supply.  Until we have alternative supplies of fuel (hydrogen etc)there is really no reason not to use oil/gas/coal and nuclear.

Sadly the climate change crisis didn't miraculously disappear just because Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

BUFF

ioealshk said:

@BUFF I apologise, I swear we were getting 13% of gas from Russia, I can see that it is indeed 3-4%. Even less of an excuse for the Westminster not to have constructed a self-sufficient energy supply system that isn't dependent on the external factors. However, the official reason for reducing the gas supply to Europe was the turbine, and neither Germany nor Canada have disputed that: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/10/canada-exempts-russian-gas-turbine-from-sanctions-amid-europe-energy-crisis

We may have only got 3-4% of our gas from Russia but something like 50% is imported from various other countries.
We built some large LNG handling facilities for this but obviously nobody anticipated the situation that the world is in.

The "official reason" is not necessarily the real reason especially where Russia is concerned these days.
Once the turbine was delivered back to Germany, Russia refused to take delivery. Then they said that other turbines needed maintenance  ...

MattMattMattUK

macman said:

What we could produce from fracking in the UK is negligible.

The UK uses around 77 billion cubic meters of gas every year. At a maximum Fracking could produce around 11 billion cubic meters per year for around 30 years. I would not say that 14% of our annual usage is negligible. At the bottom end it would produce around 3 billion cubit meters, or just under 4%, the reality is probably around 8-9 billion cubic meters, although with the current high gas prices the amount of gas that is economically recoverable is higher than previously, so the production estimates could actually go higher. It certainly would not bring prices down because of global markets, but it could help increase security of supply. 

Section62

mark_cycling00 said:

The UK has        9 Twh gas storage (100% full)
Germany has 185 Twh gas storage (75% full)

What do those figures look like if you add in each country's domestic reserves which are currently in production?

Then do an analysis of daily consumption vs domestic production reserves plus storage capacity.

The gas which is still in the ground is not directly comparable with gas which is in storage, but neither should it be ignored when people do comparisons between countries.