Front page of the Guardian newspaper yesterday was a story about rising fears of an energy crisis this winter in the UK.
Britain faces the prospect of power shortages and soaring prices this winter after the National Grid warned of a shortfall in electricity-generating capacity yesterday. The alert coincides with a surge in gas prices, which are now 40% higher than in continental Europe, and the confirmation that a vital import plant in South Wales will not be operational this winter.
The UK’s energy infrastructure is literally creaking at the seams. Top this off with problems importing gas from mainland Europe because of a lack of pipelines to cross the sea, and you can see why energy costs way more in the UK than it does elsewhere in Europe.
What does this mean for Russia, you ask? Simple – it means that energy – or, rather, Britain’s lack of energy – is going to be high in the public consciousness. And where do the public think their energy comes from? Yep, you guessed it – Russia.
I can’t think of anything more likely to keep Russia as the evil energy giant on the front pages of newspapers across the United Kingdom. Say goodbye to closer relations with Russia in the forseeable future…
(Although, to give the Guardian credit, they didn’t mention Russia in their report).
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Andy,
The non-working facility in Wales is a LNG plant. The interconnector between continental Europe and SE England has been working for a number of years.
Given the increased supply from Norwiegian fields in the “Scottish” sector and spot gas prices this looks like political scare mongering for nuclear reasons.
Andy,
The non-working facility in Wales is a LNG plant. The gas interconnector between continental Europe and SE England has been working for a number of years. It used to be that the UK supplied Europe but now it predominantly flows the other way with Russian gas.
Given the increased supply from Norwiegian fields in the “Scottish” sector and spot gas prices this looks like political scare mongering for nuclear reasons.
Is THORP still running? I seem to remember that it was ‘mothballed’…
Common sense would tell us that it should work the other way around… Russia has energy and the UK needs energy, so the UK should try to cozy up to Russia to obtain energy. However, it won’t work that way because it seems many countries think that cheap energy should be a human right.
Short-term thinking and political pandering in countries like the US and UK will only make the situation worse in the long-term because no fundamental changes will occur to change the factors that created the situation in the first place.
Current energy prices makes one wonder if the Soviet Union would have collapsed if the current energy situation existed in the 1980s.
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