The Looming Gas Shortage Across Europe And The UK
Last Monday, Wood Mackenzie reported that “European gas storage has fallen to its lowest level for this time of year since 2009” and the continent is heading into winter “with one of its weakest storage positions for this stage of the cycle in almost two decades.”
Low gas storage levels are just one of Europe’s problems. The wars in Iran and Ukraine have drastically reduced the amount of gas available to European buyers.
In particular, Europe is facing supply shortages due to reduced LNG flows through the Strait of Hormuz. That has resulted in a huge run-up in prices.
Since the start of the Iran war in February, European natural gas prices have more than doubled and are now trading at the highest level since the war began.
Now consider the possibility of Europe being hit by a long, frigid winter. Then add in the possibility that the Iran war escalates, and the Iranians or their proxies, launch sustained attacks on LNG infrastructure and LNG vessels.
If one or both of those things happen, not only will there be no gas for household cooking or central heating, there will also be no fuel for the gas-fired power stations, so there will be lengthy power cuts as well.
Oh, and don’t forget that the European Union has declared that it will prohibit imports of Russian LNG after January 1, 2027.
That matters because during the first half of this year, the EU imported record amounts of gas from Russia’s giant Yamal LNG facility.
This is very likely to result in many thousands of people freezing to death.
But at least those who have to die can take comfort in the fact that their sacrifice is helping ‘save the planet’.
See more here substack.com
Header image: Birmingham Mail
Terry Shipman
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But…but…we climate alarmists know that any new gas wells we drill will be stranded assets when we complete the conversion to wind and solar so we might just as well buy gas from others in the meantime. Besides, we know that the world will run out of gas anyway.
That kind of reasoning makes me angry. In the first place our great-grandchildren, when they are elderly, won’t see any shortage of recoverable natural gas. Secondly, it has been adequately demonstrated that a modern civilization CAN NOT run on wind and solar.
You risk supply interruptions if you depend on foreign sources. It’s much better to have domestic production of energy. Otherwise you risk, as this article pointed out, people freezing to death. Ask the Donner Party what cold will do to you. They had little trouble with the heat during the summer. But when they got to the mountains that fall…
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