We don’t need no stinking gas – we have bird shredders!

 

So there it is: Ofgem has raised the ‘price cap’ to £3,500 from 1st October 2022. This news dominates the print front pages (link). Miz Truss is on record that she’ll ‘help’ households within days of getting into No 10. How eminently reassuring! This piece of ‘news’ is reported in the online editions of the DT (paywalled link) and The Times (link, paywalled), amounting to hot air when looking at the report in the non-paywalled DM where the headline always provides a good summary:

“Truss unveils plans to beat energy crisis: Tory leadership favourite ‘will give multi-billion bailout to hardest-hit families’ as price cap rockets to £3,500-a-year from TODAY and reveals she will hold emergency budget DAYS after entering No10 if she wins” (link)

How very reassuring! We’re of course reminded everywhere that all this is the fault of Putin who has ‘weaponised’ gas prices. It’s certainly not the fault of inept governments, especially that of the still current PM Johnson.

Remember that this government has neglected to fill the strategic reserve gas storage, something talked about vaguely last year. Remember that the first price hikes, a.k.a. ‘price cap’ by Ofgem, happened last October, at a time when Putin hadn’t even installed all those troops along the Ukrainian border.

You can read the rest of the Truss ‘aims’ in that DM report (link) – it amounts to nothing more than continuing the £15bn handout in place since June – yes, June 2022! It amounts to nothing more than talking with the current Chancellor Zahawi and the Business Sec Kwarteng. There’s also a beautiful scare graph in the text, something the DM is famous for. Their graph editors must be glad that their services are required again, now that the Lockdown mania is apparently history.

However, there’s something which has been puzzling me for some time now. Germany and France have allegedly filled their gas storage to 80% and 90%. What about our gas storages ? Are they filled in any way? I had to trawl through the interwebz to find the following report in the BBC, from 30th May 2022, according to which the “UK [is] in talks to reopen giant gas storage facility for winter” (link). On the same day ‘iNews’ headlined their report (my emphasis):

“UK government u-turns on gas storage to try and ease pressure on European energy crisis – The Government had previously concluded it did not matter whether or not the UK had the capacity to store natural gas” (link)

So “we” didn’t really need gas, not for heating, not for electricity production, not for industry? Why? Because of Net Zero – remember COP26 when Johnson said that using gas was worse than the devil? And now there’s this u-turn, three months ago and three months into the Ukrainian war. Amazing.

Weren’t those storage sites meant to help buffering shortages and rising gas prices? After all, in regard to petrol Biden did empty the US strategic oil storages at that time. So what happened? Did the government suddenly realise that the sanctions against Russia might bite us as well? 

There’s more: this u-turn demonstrates that government and gas suppliers, never mind Ofgem, simply lived in Alice-in-Wonderland country. No urgency at all to be noticed, not even while that war was going on and Putin was blamed for ‘stopping gas supplies’ to Germany. On the 15th of this month (!) the DT has a report – just savour this:

“Britain’s biggest gas storage facility has been cleared to reopen by safety inspectors in a move that will allow it to start filling up for the winter within weeks. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is poised to begin pumping natural gas into the Rough storage site at the start of September after securing approval from the Health and Safety Executive.” (paywalled link)

What has Centrica, what has the ‘Health ‘n Safety Executive’ been doing in the year since this lack of storage was reported? Why did it take them three months since yon ‘u-turn talks’ to put their little toe into refilling that storage? I wonder however if they have actually started filling up that ‘reserve’ when I saw that:

“[…] the only remaining obstacles to reopening Rough are an agreement between Centrica and the Government on state support and final consents from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which are not seen as problematic. A Whitehall source on Monday said government officials and Centrica are aiming to conclude their talks in time for the company to begin filling up Rough in little more than a fortnight.” (paywalled link)

Remember, this report came out on the 15th of this month and they allegedly will start filling ‘er up on the 1st of September. It gets worse. See this next (my emphasis):

“[…] Rough, which sits 18 miles off the coast of Yorkshire under the North Sea, could provide Britain with extra supplies at crucial moments. The facility can hold enough gas to meet winter demand for around 10 days when full, although it is only expected to return at around one quarter of its capacity this winter.” (paywalled link)

So they’re only going to fill 25% of this storage site which means that there’s not even a ten-day-reserve for winter. That’s why gas suppliers will have to keep foraging on the world markets for gas. It’s a question of supply and demand: more gas needed for the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, so more money to be demanded. How astonishing.

That begs the question what Johnson has been doing except swanning around to Kiev at the drop of a hat. What did he tell his ministers to do since last October when Ofgem announced the first painful ‘cap’ of over £1,000? Remember that there was no war, that there was no question of Putin ‘weaponising’ gas.

Was this supine acceptance of rising gas prices because of Johnson’s ‘Net Zero’ policy, ‘unveiled’ at COP26 in 2021 when we were told that use of gas, especially for heating and cooking, should be ‘discontinued’ in favour of ‘renewables’? 

One final point: our Ofgem. I’ve wondered for some time why it is so spineless, letting the Energy industry drive prices up unquestioned. This is what I found (my emphasis):

“We are a non-ministerial government department and an independent National Regulatory Authority. Our role is to protect consumers now and in the future by working to deliver a greener, fairer energy system.” (link)

Blimey! Ofgem ‘protects’ us plebs by delivering ‘green energy’ while permitting energy firms such as Centrica to charge ever more exorbitant prices? Words fail me! If you like, you can read the whole PR guff at their site at the link provided above.

This government, Truss, Johnson, all those ministers, have done nothing at all not because they are ‘standing against’ Putin’ but because they and their Ofgem are surreptitiously if not openly promoting Net Zero. The ukrainian war is a wonderful excuse behind which to hide their Net Zero agenda. It’s not Putin making us freeze – this was the green plan all along.  

Meanwhile, in order to look like good little Net Zeroists, we have ‘out-sourced’ our energy and power production to other countries It’s a despicable way of making us ‘look good’. on the green world stage. After all, we’ve  outsourced production of anything which is ‘dirty’, so why not let other countries like Norway or France do that grimy, un-green work while we import their electricity.

Remember when you have to freeze this winter as food prices rise and businesses go to the wall: it’s all in the good cause of achieving Net Zero. Also don’t forget that, thanks to VAT and ‘green surcharges’, the government is raking in revenue when prices are sky high and keep on rising. Any gracious hand-outs have already been paid for by us. Enjoy the rest of the day … there’s sunshine, allegedly.



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