Reading the comments under Daily Mail articles about energy is always an interesting exercise. You start with the article itself, which in this case was a mildly alarming piece about Britain having “two days of gas”, and then descend into the comments where the real drama unfolds.
Within about half a dozen posts we had already reached treason.
Apparently not drilling every last square inch of the North Sea is now “an act of treason”. That is quite a promotion for what is, in reality, a policy disagreement about declining offshore reserves. One half expects the next step will involve hanging Ed Miliband from the nearest wind turbine.
Another reader announced that Norway is “laughing as they drain our oil and sell it back to us”. This is a remarkable achievement considering the North Sea has been divided into national sectors for decades and Norwegian platforms are, somewhat inconveniently for the theory, sitting in Norwegian waters. If they are secretly siphoning British oil sideways through the seabed, it is the most discreet feat of engineering since the Channel Tunnel.
Then there is the gas panic itself. According to the comments, Britain will run out of energy sometime on Tuesday afternoon because we only have two days of gas. This would come as a surprise to the operators of the pipelines bringing gas from Norway, the LNG terminals receiving tankers from the United States, and the North Sea platforms that are still producing gas every day.
The UK system largely runs on a just-in-time supply model. Gas flows continuously from several directions rather than sitting in vast underground caverns waiting to be used. The “two days” figure refers only to storage capacity, not the total gas available to the country. But explaining that tends to spoil the end-of-the-world atmosphere.
At the moment there is another wrinkle that rarely gets mentioned in the comments. Because of the war in the Middle East, LNG cargoes from Qatar are not currently reaching Europe. Oddly enough, the lights have not gone out. Gas is still arriving from the North Sea, still flowing through pipelines from Norway, and still coming in on tankers from the United States and other suppliers. That is precisely why the system was designed with multiple sources.
And of course the whole thing is blamed on Net Zero, which apparently now controls everything from energy policy to the weather. Meanwhile the only part of my own household energy supply whose price has not risen by a single penny is the solar panels on the roof. The electricity they produce today costs exactly the same as it did the day they were installed, which is to say absolutely nothing. Sunlight has so far proved remarkably resistant to international crises.
What makes the whole debate slightly surreal is that Britain does still produce oil and gas from the North Sea. Roughly half our gas demand is met domestically, and Norway supplies much of the rest via pipeline. The real difference between the two countries is not that they are stealing our oil. It is what each country did with the money.
Norway saved its oil income in a sovereign wealth fund that now contains well over a trillion dollars. Britain, by contrast, treated the windfall rather like a generous Christmas bonus. It went straight into the Treasury and helped fund tax cuts, public spending and the rather expensive process of managing the industrial upheavals of the 1980s. Perfectly understandable decisions at the time perhaps, but not quite the same as quietly parking the money for future generations.
But that is a slightly more complicated story than the comments section prefers. It is much easier to picture Norwegians cackling on offshore rigs while secretly sucking British oil through a straw beneath the seabed.
Meanwhile the sun continues to rise every morning and, rather annoyingly for the fossil fuel purists, it keeps generating electricity on my roof for free. Which does rather take the edge off the national energy catastrophe that, according to the comments, is due to arrive sometime on Tuesday afternoon.
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