Energy U Turn?

I think some folk have not realized that we have already extracted most of the easy oil and gas from the north sea - and while doing so spent it on our transition from being a more or less a manufacturing economy to one based on human factors and financial services and so forth.
That may not have been the brightest idea, but while injecting sea water, lateral drilling and a very big bag of clever tricks,  will keep production up a bit longer and allow us to sweep out from the hard to extract areas we ignored the first time round, there is no magic tap under the north sea that will ever restore us to 1980s and 1990s  levels of fuel independence. We may also soon find out if UK fracking for gas is actually as easy as some folk seem to think it is. Geology says it isn't.. So while we may as well squeeze the north sea as much as we can right now, we should also be using all the renewables we can get, and building some new nuclear, and urgently getting our act together, while also buying up thicker underwear and tinned food just in case.

Mike.

PS http://euanmearns.com/uk-north-sea-oil-production-decline/

A slightly dated article from a well respected author on the topic. Since then the trend continues with odd rallies from new technology coming on-line.

Agree that the easy/cheap oil and gas is largely gone. We can not realistically eliminate gas for some years, but should reduce gas consumption by greater use of renewables whenever possible.

And yes I have long underwear, thick wool blankets, canned food, candles, batteries, several tons of logs, a ton of anthracite, a few propane cylinders, 100 litres of paraffin, 30 litres of petrol and other supplies.

If the price gets high enough, it becomes worthwhile to extract the difficult stuff below the North Sea.

I feel really guilty 'cos I live in a 120 year old poorly-insulated house, and even more so 'cos I have had a coal fire going today on account of the fresh easterly wind. On the plus side, it must be better to heat one room than the whole house.

The biggest problem is that it takes decades to turn the ship around.

If the price gets high enough, it becomes worthwhile to extract the difficult stuff below the North Sea.

I feel really guilty 'cos I live in a 120 year old poorly-insulated house, and even more so 'cos I have had a coal fire going today on account of the fresh easterly wind. On the plus side, it must be better to heat one room than the whole house.

The biggest problem is that it takes decades to turn the ship around.