Sunday, Bloody Sunday and more bad news for the UK - shortages of gas and scientists

Department of Trade and Industry Energy Trends and Quarterly Energy Prices Trends 28th June 2007 For the 1st Qtr of 2007

GAS: QUARTER 1 2007

- Total indigenous UK production of natural gas in the first quarter of 2007 was 16.8 % down on Q1 2006.
- Compared with Q1 2006, exports of natural gas in Q1 2007 increased by 44.1 per cent and imports increased by 50.6 per cent.
- Demand for gas in Q1 2007 was 3.4 % lower than in Q1 of 2006.
- Gas use for electricity generation increased by 34.2 % and domestic consumption fell 12.9% public administration, commerce and agriculture consumption fell by 11.2 % and in the industrial sector by 12.3 %.

Sunday Express helps chart industrial decline
Now in the grip of greedy pornographer Desmond the Uxpress Group has a good history, especially of financial reporting. 2 Stories in the Sunday Edition today are noteworthy
1. Tracey Boles the Deputy Business Editor -" Half our Gas to be foreign by 2009" injects a raw xenophobic touch to the realisation that indigenous gas supplies are declinig lickety split. Apparently British Gas (whose parent Centrica reports this week) have provided the headline by telling her that imports could provide 50% of UK gas demand by 2009. "Industry forecasts" had previously indicated 2010/11 for this milestone - see the figures above - complete figures from the report here - show the level of decline - which has been accelerated by (litle reported) damage to the North Sea Central Area Transmission System (CATS) gas pipeline,which shut on July 1 after its concrete casing was damaged by a ship's anchor near Teesside port. Divers are inspecting the damage and operators BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward also told a news conference that it would be a number of weeks before repairs would be complete.As gas cannot be extracted this also affects oil production.

The 404 Km seabed CATS pipeline brigs gas ashore at Teesside from the Armada, Seymour, North Everest, Banff, Eastern Trough Area Project, J-Block, Lomond and Erskine fields U.K. gas network operator National Grid PLC NGG. The pipe has previously been delivering gas at a rate of just over 40 Mn cubic metres a week.

Naturally this will also affect North Sea Oil production but nobody is publicly putting any numbers to reduced gas and oil production as a result of the incident. It will not be small or insignificant... can't blame God this time either.

2. FCUKED, the Forthcoming United Kingdom Energy Deficit has been campaigning since 1999 about the loss of indigenous energy resource, and it's impact on the import / export gap and consequent fiscal costs - and consequences.

To remedy this we have promoted the need to build new nuclear power facilities and managed to get Tony Blair to discuss it for the first time in Manchester just prior to the 2005 election.

Building nuclear power station is now official Government policy (although they are consulting Ho.Ho.Ho.) , the shortage of nuclear engineers, (no UK Unversity runs a course) let alone a sufficient number to build the ten stations required is a major resource problem.

This was identified in 1999 by the drop in students sitting A levels in the basic sciences plus Mathematics and IT who would be the seed corn for engineers we would hope to be 5/6 years into their professional career today.

Therefore the lament by Sir John Rose CEO of Rolls Royce about "his biggest headache is finding experienced engineers in the UK" after producing stunning results. Tracey Boles again reports, 1 Mn jobs gone in the last decade in manufacturing industry and too many pupils are abandoning sciences for the humanities.

Therefore it is not surprising ,that with a bulging Order book for the massively successful Trent engine series for the Airbus 380, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the possibility (if it ever is built) for supplying the A350 presents Sir John and Rolls Royce are faced with the difficulty of actually making them.

Rolls Royce is gearing up to build it's first overseas manufacturing and test site Tracey exlains and are looking at the US (where subsidiary Allison operates in Indianapolis ***) and Singapore. With Asia and the Middle East accounting for 44% of the order book, and the US$50 Bn, aero engine market opening up in China, it doesn't need much skill in human resouces to consider the streams of young engineers flowing out of Singapore / Malaysia / Universities to decide where to go. (not to mention S.Korea and Japan).

FCUKED's money is on a bit more land in Singapore harbour.

*** Mitch Daniels the Republican Governor of Indiana and ex member fo the G Bush Administration (Office of Budget Management who helped plan the illegal invasion of Iraq) would bend over backwards for Allison to develop their plant(s?) as the GM manufacturing plants in Indiana fade away.

Pic shows Sir Ralph Robbins, former Cairman of Rolls Royce, Sir Frank Whittle's son Ian and Chales Blundell PR Bullshit supremo art RR help celebrate (with a large lunch) on 4th July the birth 100 years ago on June 1st of Sir Frank Whittle who designed the first jet engine (his first patent was in 1930) which everyone ignored until it was too late.

"To travel to Australia used to take 200 days and because of Sir Frank it takes 22 hours," said Cllr Charlie FraserFleming, a trustee of the Sir Frank Whittle Commemorative Trust.

"It was a huge effort to get the turbojet engine made all those years ago. A lot of people didn’t believe it would work and he didn’t get a lot of support from the government."

Very good at glorifying past failures of Governments to listen to scientists - a brilliant engineer and far sighted man he only died 11 years ago. A 9 foot statue was also undraped in the Millennium Park in Coventry where he was born.

Like Radar, jet engines were another innovation given to the US during WWII who quickly and superbly exploited the technology (see Bell XP59A Airacomet US's first jet 1942) to become world leaders.

Bush the Infallible, the Immaculate... does he have divine guidance ?

President Bush, simply ignores the wishes of the elected representatives whenever he wants, either adding signature clauses to bills, undertaking breathtaking breaches of the constitution - use of torture, breach of habeus corpus, making war as he wishes, warrantelss wiretapping and electronic surveillance - Jeffersonian participatory democracy is for export, not home consumption with this bone head.

He is at it again ... Just as he appointed John Bolton to the post of UN Ambassador utilising the Senate recess to deliberately appoint him. His excellency King George has now appointed Richard Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration in deliberate defiance of the Senate, which he is allowed to do without Senate approval , when Congress is out of session.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was forced to cancel a vote on Stickler's confirmation last June due the lack of Senate support for Stickler's nomination. Then in August, in an unprecedented action, the Senate returned Stickler's nomination to the White House before it went on break. But refusing to take the hint, the President renominated Stickler at the beginning of September. The Senate unamused and unmoved by this direct confrontation on their authroity again returned the nomination to the White House.

Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd have led the opposition to Stickler, citing his industry background and the lack of commitment to MSHA reform that he displayed at his confirmation hearing. The AFL-CIO, United Mine Workers of America, United Steelworkers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the International Brothers of Boilermakers have all called on Bush to withdraw the nomination.

Kennedy called for a new nominee:

“We are in the midst of a mine safety crisis — 58 miners have already died this year, more than any year since 2002.

Thirty-eight coal miners and 20 metal/non-metal miners have died in the workplace this year which began with the tragic January 2 Sago Mine disaster in which 12 coal miners died."

On his website Senator Kennedy said of Stickler

"Mr. Stickler has spent the overwhelming part of his career as a coal industry executive, focused on profits and production, not on worker safety. In fact, mines where he was in charge had injury rates far above the national average.... During his tenure as head of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety, he was well known for granting exceptions from safety rules for mining companies. He even bent critical rules designed to prevent mien fires on conveyor belts and to guarantee that miners could reach safe places to protect themselves from runaway railcars......

...... read on at the website how mining company interests were protected and promoted

Bush as ever , was not listening. His nominee, with an appalling record of overseeing mines with incredibly poor safety records stood for nothing.. nobody was going to tell George Bush what to do. Fuck the Senate - they only represent the people. It was a dialogue of the deaf on his side.

The full story is at the excellent (must read) ;"Confined Space News and Commentary on Workplace Health & Safety, Labor and Politics " and posted last week.