Great Britain has only two days of fossil gas stored after a decline in energy reserves, as more tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are diverted from their course to Europe towards Asia because of the Iran war.
Great Britain had 6,999 gigawatt hours (GWh) of fossil gas stored on Saturday, according to figures from National Gas, which owns and operates the gas national transmission system. This compares with 9,105 GWh a year earlier.
Maximum capacity is 12 days of gas, and current storage levels equate to under two days of reserves, leading to concerns that Great Britain could run out of gas if the crisis in the Middle East escalates further.
Maximum capacity is 12 days of gas
Gas is hard to store so reserves are small. Times like this with price increases and warmer weather is exactly when you lower reserves to create temporary supply to depress price inflation. When prices are better, or as winter approaches, you buy extra to fill the reserves back up.
Britain’s gas storage levels are broadly in line with what we would expect at this point in the year and are comparable to this time last year.
So is this a lie then?
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “It is categorically untrue that the UK only has access to two days of gas supply. We have a diverse energy mix and are confident in our security of supply.
That’s weaseling.
They have access to diverse supply. The reserves in hand are a different topic.
Those are not mutually exclusive statements. One talks about gas reserves actually stored right now. If all gas supply gets cut off UK will run out of gas in 2 days. If gas supply drops they only have these reserves to help them offset this while they look for new sources.
The spokesperson says they have access to more supplies. This can mean they have ships and pipelines delivering them more gas all the time and that they have those supplies secured for more than two days. He says that sources this gas are diverse and that they are not worried about this being disrupted.
Sure glad we let the Nimby’s dictate infrastructure
Who is nimby?
People who oppose building anything.
It’s a US term vastly abused by YIMBY/Developer simps who want a libertarian approach to house construction, to cover everyone from environmentalist who don’t want giant AI datacenters built nextdoor to them to people who think a % of newly built homes should be affordable.
Yeah TrueNIMBYs™ exist but the vast majority of “NIMBYs” are people with legitimate concerns that could be addressed if developers made slightly less money on their project.
I think it’s the acronym for “not in my backyard”.
Basically residents that oppose things that are needed for the community, like certain infrastructure, because it affects their property values or changes their neighborhood but aren’t opposed to it elsewhere.
Thank you
Acronym for Not In My Back Yard
Thank you
nimby = Not in my backyard
He’s talking about people who oppose all change, especially new wind and solar power installations.
I wouldn’t say “especially” renewable electricity. The magnitude of that NIMBYism pales in comparison to opposing zoning dense enough to support walking, biking and transit (which is, in turn, the far bigger contributor to “petroleum supplies cut off” being a problem).
The UK doesn’t use US style zoning though.
And zoning on both sides of the Atlantic has very little to do with the under supply of housing.
The reality is private markets are really bad at building affordable homes, as It’s more profitable to build few homes and what does get built is built to rent out, with a hefty chunk of those rents used to inflate house prices further.
The UK doesn’t use US style zoning though.
Maybe not explicitly, but make no mistake: “modernist” American city planners’ terrible ideas were exported to the whole English-speaking world.
Take Milton Keynes, for example.
And zoning on both sides of the Atlantic has very little to do with the under supply of housing.
It has everything to do with it! In most North American cities, something like 75% of all residentially-zoned land is single-family only. In the worst, it approaches 95% (e.g. San Jose, CA). Housing is not fungible: people want to live in or near the city center, not the exurbs, and in these places it is literally illegal to build the dense housing necessary to meet that demand.
I mean, think about it: the entire purpose of restricting density is to create shortages of dense housing; if the demand weren’t there, the restriction wouldn’t need to exist. Shortages are the goal! You might try to rebut that by saying they want single-family housing to be produced as a substitute good, but land is finite so physical reality does not work that way. If you restrict the maximum number of people who are allowed to live per unit area of land, then the rest of the people who want to live there, can’t!
The idea of fixing the undersupply of housing without abolishing zoning density restrictions is just straight-up delusional magical thinking. Geometry and physical reality simply does not permit it.
And getting back to the original point: when you literally enshrine suburban sprawl into law – whether by North American-style Euclidean zoning or whatever the fuck the UK did in New Towns like Milton Keynes – you force car-dependency and make your country vulnerable to oil price shocks. That’s just how it works, and windmills and solar panels have fuck-all to do with it!
Take Milton Keynes, for example.
What’s wrong with Milton Keynes, zoning wise it’s well planned and largely mixed used as opposed to euclidean zoning?
In the worst, it approaches 95% (e.g. San Jose, CA).
There is literally not true: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/single-family-zoning-reform-highlights-a-breakthrough-in-california-housing-policy/
The idea of fixing the undersupply of housing without abolishing zoning density restrictions is just straight-up delusional magical thinking.
The idea that zoning is why private markets are failing to build supply is delusional, you can look at housing production in the US, tell me when zoning laws changed based on this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST . Even more delusional when you’re talking about the UK which doesn’t have zoning.
Private markets just aren’t good at building sufficient adequate housing, because housing isn’t fungible building luxury flats for landlords to further inflate the housing market isn’t the same as building public housing or affordable housing.
There is literally not true: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/single-family-zoning-reform-highlights-a-breakthrough-in-california-housing-policy/
“The fact that people just now finally made some headway in solving the problem proves the problem never existed in the first place!”
Sure, buddy.
The idea that zoning is why private markets are failing to build supply is delusional, you can look at housing production in the US, tell me when zoning laws changed based on this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST .
They changed before the chart started. Your “gotcha” demand is disingenuous.
Private markets just aren’t good at building sufficient adequate housing, because housing isn’t fungible building luxury flats for landlords to further inflate the housing market isn’t the same as building public housing or affordable housing.
And yet that still has fuck-all to do with windmills and solar panels, so what’s your point? Do you deny that NIMBYs oppose public housing?
Isn’t it more that the national gas storage was sold off/ privatised, and the private operators decided it’s more profitable to have less storage?
UK doing UK things.
UK still doing Thatcher things.
