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Gas and Electricity Prices

For the avoidance of doubt I am not dyslexic. I do have a chronic, degenerative neurological condition that means I am constantly exhausted so my posts are not as brilliant as they once were especially later in the day or during hot weather.

I didn't find Mike's post offensive although I was a bit surprised he couldn't parse my post in context.
 
Mike Reed said:
I'm on a learning curve but I think you're banging the drum here. ;) Seriously, I didn't know that dyslexia had that kind of range to include your homophone example.
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It’s such a wide spectrum thing nowadays. We have a lot of dyslexia in our family…dyslexics seem to attract dyslexics. My wife ended up doing a post-grad in the subject so she could help out kids; she’s only recently retired from coaching kids. It took me a long time to realise why I’d developed strategies to help me cope.

Re Op-Ed, it only entered mainstream U.K. vernacular during the recent Depp trial.
 
We have quite a broad spread of familiarity with the term Op-Ed ranging from:

30 years
10 years
The 2nd Depp/Heard trial
Today

I’ve asked my family, no one else knew what it meant. Maybe it depends on what people read and where they read it. Most internet definitions relate the term to US usage which presumably has spilled over to some in the U.K.
 
wacko said:
The UK Govt/we have been getting that benefit one way or another. According to Wiki £330 BILLION has been paid in production tax since 1970.
It has been spent somewhere, unlike Norway which has saved it and created the worlds largest Sovereign Wealth Fund.
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Please refer to my previous posting about this. There is no point of contact between the UK and Norway regarding oil and gas. Oil and gas revenues in the UK have always been 'small beer' in terms of our GDP. The situation in Norway is nearly the opposite, oil and gas have been a large part of their GDP and they only have a small population.

It is true that Norway taxed at a higher level which maybe we should have done but Norway has only 1/12th the population.

In 2007 the UK produced 27.81bbls/ 1000 people, Norway produced 554.2bbls/ 1000 people and therein lies the difference.

You can read accounts where the fact that the two countries have produced broadly similar amounts of oil and gas are clearly stated but this, in isolation, makes no reference to the comparative populations.

I am not saying we couldn't maybe have made better use of the taxes applied and/ or applied higher levels of tax but it isn't the only factor.

Regards

Richard
 
clivem2 said:
We have quite a broad spread of familiarity with the term Op-Ed ranging from:

30 years
10 years
The 2nd Depp/Heard trial
Today

I’ve asked my family, no one else knew what it meant. Maybe it depends on what people read and where they read it. Most internet definitions relate the term to US usage which presumably has spilled over to some in the U.K.
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As it's a North American term likely those familiar with it have been long time consumers of USA based news operations. I am. It's been used in UK based Private Eye for decades.
 
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matthewr said:
For the avoidance of doubt I am not dyslexic. I do have a chronic, degenerative neurological condition that means I am constantly exhausted so my posts are not as brilliant as they once were especially later in the day or during hot weather.

I didn't find Mike's post offensive although I was a bit surprised he couldn't parse my post in context.
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The day I'm offensive here will be the day I give up pfm, which is all I can cope with now (used to be 3 forums), but I have a condition called senile octogenarian moments, which tend to be after late afternoons but my justification is that I overdo it physically (my avatar is a clue) and my pedantry usurps my translation skills, Matthew. I never made the transition from one finger typewriter to keyboard (and likewise to most things digital )and with failing eyesight, win gold in typographical errors needing continual and repeated proof-reading, editing and correction but it does keep me on my toes. At least, pfm keeps me on my toes ! Everything will be alright when it rains here in Saharan Norwich, as the heat has been oppressive to the oppressed as you may agree. :)
 
I've certainly heard of Op-Ed, and seen it in print many times, but without checking I'm not entirely sure what it means. (Checks) OK, I sort of had the meaning right in my head, though I thought the 'Op' bit was short for 'Opinion', which it isn't. But it gives me an excuse to reprint this glorious piece of writing by the late, great, Hunter S Thompson:

'Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and/or reply.

Unfortunately, we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended up there.

What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asks for “a thinkpiece”, goddamnit, we want a ****ing Thinkpiece… and don’t try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a “50,000 word novella about the condition humaine, etc…”

Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs?

You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want it ready for press. The time has come & gone when cheapjack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I’m ****ed if I’m going to stand for it any longer.

Sincerely,

Hunter S Thompson'
 
clivem2 said:
I won’t pretend to understand the Laws of Thermodynamics. Why won’t pumping co2 into basalt with the subsequent chemical reaction which solidifies it in the rock do any good?

This stuff comes out of your old Uni :) they are involved with https://www.carbfix.com/
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The problem has two prongs. CCS depends on some form of pick-and-mix between:

1) Chemical reactions to grab CO2 gas and turn it into some form of convenient solid or liquid that is easier to shift and then 'store'.

2) Physical processes to seperate out the CO2, pressurise/liquidise it and then find a deep dark place to take it to and 'hide away and forget'.

The snag with (1) is that you got energy from buring fossil fuel because changing the Carbon into being in CO2 molecules gave you a given amount of energy/mole. You now need to shove that amount *back into the CO2 molecules if you want to rip the C and O apart again. You *may* find some reaction that can 'drop the C' into another bonded well that gives some back. But this shifts the problem offstage to finding whatever reactive material will let you do that, and do it efficiently.

(2) Takes extra energy.

Basically, you got energy by dropping the C down an (energy) well. CCS means providing energy to pull it up the (energy) well again.

Basic Thermodynamics.... which also adds in that no process in realty is 'perfectly' reverable if heat is involved.

So over the decades we've had countless CCS 'demonstrator' projects funded by Government *and* big fossil. But in reality it is largely a PR stunt. Magic wands will be waved, don't worry about the CO2, someone will fix it... :-/
 
matthewr said:
My understanding is they asked Gordon Brown what he thought and then he wrote an op-ed in the Graun.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...r-bills-should-be-temporarily-re-nationalised

Brown's plan and Starmer's are both orders of magnitude better than the nonsense we have heard from Truss and Sunak.
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Yes. But it still skates away from the real problem if you're not talking about the *extraction* company prices/profits. The 'retail' companies we buy from as individual users are piggy-in-the-middle. Capping them just means we end up paying via Government for the high price extractors charge us *unless* we cap/control that.

So, may simply be moving the deckchairs on the Titanic in terms of we eventually pay.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Yes. But it still skates away from the real problem if you're not talking about the *extraction* company prices/profits. The 'retail' companies we buy from as individual users are piggy-in-the-middle. Capping them just means we end up paying via Government for the high price extractors charge us *unless* we cap/control that.

So, may simply be moving the deckchairs on the Titanic in terms of we eventually pay.
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This may be semantics, but there's no functional difference between capping the price an extraction company can charge the UK, or the UK government slapping on an equivalent windfall tax to recoup the difference after the event.
 
clivem2 said:
It’s true that CCS is in it’s infancy but it’s moving very quickly, a couple of countries have very big programs about to start. I’m sceptical about scavenging carbon from the atmosphere, getting it directly from a power station seems more straightforward to me. I really don’t know the geochemistry but my son does..he’s leading projects on CCS and Geo-Thermal energy. This in Norway where they are rather more forward thinking than we are in the U.K. which is how they ended up so wealthy.
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Well, the good news is that if/when we have loads of non-fossil energy sources we can use some of them to power CCS. The snag at present is in the conditional in that statement, though. And given the, erm, weather recently, I'd say we were getting a bit near to being too late.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
This may be semantics, but there's no functional difference between capping the price an extraction company can charge the UK, or the UK government slapping on an equivalent windfall tax to recoup the difference after the event.
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In principle, yes, in the long term. But ends up with dealing with added complications like ensuring retail companies can continue OK, and people get the money to pay the bloated bills so you can recover the money a year or few later. (Or you print the money for them, and get it back later.) Also means inflation pressure which simply capping the extraction price can avoid. So in practice an inefficient approach that still causes harm as it works though.

Simpler and more effective to cap/control the extraction arrangement. Removes the inflation pressure and then reduces having to shuffle and delay and muddle.

Note that energy price affects the price of many goods and services as well as causing employees to need a wage rise.

So why go the long way round a (burning) barn to get the hose?
 
We probably disagree about the 'simpler' bit Jim. I think capping the price a multinational company can charge the UK is a bit fraught with its own legal, logistical and political difficulties. Not to mention Big Oil's natural tendency to game systems put in place to control them, so I'd be a bit concerned that it might not work out as intended, your way.
 
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