Government to ban oil and gas exploration

TheBigShort said:
As I understand it. The burning of gas and oil releases carbon emissions into the atmosphere. If its not sourced, it cant be burnt.
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The point has been made that if we don't provide our own we'll just buy it from someone else but neither option will impact at all on how much we burn. In fact if we don't produce it locally it will have to be shipped in, thus increasing our overall carbon footprint.
 
Purple said:
No, keep buying Nuclear generated power from the UK. We are too small to have large scale plants here.
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I like the idea of energy security and not depending on the UK. We could also move most vehicles to electric. Two plants could meet demand with a third for redundancy/export. The only way is up for population numbers and demand.
 
It's the hypocrisy of the government that gets to me, just a few months ago they could have equalized the duties on diesel and petrol but they balked at that, that would have been a hard and unpopular move. They could increase dramatically the excise duty on suvs but again that would be highly unpopular. So they go after an easy target exploration companies that are barely exploring anyway due to the big risks in exploration in the deep Atlantic. Some of the best brains in the world are involved in offshore exploration and these are the guys we have to thank for not being totally dependent on middle east oil. Despite all the renewables etc , oil demand is still rising year on year
 

If that what materialises then I agree it would be futile.

But a significant backdrop to all this is climate change and the Paris accord. With the exception of the Trump administration, the whole world is committing to finding alternative sources of energy outside of burning fossil fuels.
So, without all the detail to hand, I can imagine that there will be penalties (tariffs perhaps?) on the future importation of oil and gas, where viable alternative sources are available and where such importations result in increased carbon emissions.

Secondly, in terms in international trade, we are never going to compete in the oil and gas markets. However, we can compete in the food producing markets. So the sooner we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, the more scope there will be to increase our stock of farting cows! (Until such time as we can wean ourselves of cow farts too of course).
 
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"We are never going to compete in oil and gas markets", you could have said the same about Scotland until early 70s, we are not competing because we have not found any oil, but we are going to go ahead and hobble a potentially huge indigenous industry. I doubt Saudi Arabia or Russia are going to hobble their oil industries because of global warming. I doubt people are going to swap their suvs for smart cars. So we just allow Saudi Arabia and Russia to get higher prices for their oil, remember oil demand is constantly rising
 
joe sod said:
you could have said the same about Scotland until early 70s,
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Of course! Scotland in the '70's!! Instead of looking forward 40 yrs I should be looking 40yrs back?

joe sod said:
we are not competing because we have not found any oil
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It tends to be a significant factor alright.

joe sod said:
but we are going to go ahead and hobble a potentially huge indigenous industry
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"Potentially huge"? How about starting with potential. Im no expert, but in my lifetime, Kinsale and Corrib gas fields were about as good as it got. Neither has the capacity to supply the whole island long-term.

joe sod said:
I doubt Saudi Arabia or Russia are going to hobble their oil industries because of global warming.
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Well if the environmental forecasts come through, it will be global warming that hobbles the oil industry, regardless of what SA or Russia think.

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joe sod said:
doubt people are going to swap their suvs for smart cars.
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Not willingly no, but tariffs, taxes are awful effective in changing habits.

joe sod said:
remember oil demand is constantly rising
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Yes, triggering concerns about global warming and international policies that may reverse that trend.
 
I'm assuming that the price of hydrocarbons never drops to 0.
I'm assuming that humanity will consume most big hydrocarbon deposits in the world, sooner or later.
I'm assuming that extraction technology will continue to become cleaner and more efficient.

In that case, even if we set aside all green factors, drilling later is better than drilling sooner.
Putting a padlock on Ireland's strategic reserve sounds good to me.
 
"Putting a padlock on Ireland's strategic reserve", sounds good and its good point. However we don't have a strategic reserve, we would only have one if the Irish government itself was exploring for oil and actually found oil and then decided not to drill it. We are depending on private exploration companies to do that and billions have already been spent, ask providence resources shareholders who have been basically wiped out. So if these guys found oil , you tell them sorry guys you can't drill it that's for Ireland's strategic reserve. Also I think the improving technology probably belongs to the exploration companies, we can't piggyback on that for free, it will still be very difficult to explore for oil in the deep oceans, when all is said and done somebody still has to stick a drill bit several kms down in the most hostile conditions on the planet to find out what's actually there
 
We should maybe think about banning oil and gas exploration once oil and gas are the dirtiest of our fuels and we have alternatives. Right now a sizable fraction of our emissions come from the Moneypoint coal-burning plant. It provides the kind of baseload power needed to back up our intermittent renewables. It will have to be replaced, probably with a gas powered plant. Make no mistake, in this context natural gas is a "green" fuel. (Nothing's ever totally green, just greener). Cutting off a potential indigenous supply is nuts and will only increase emissions as we'll eventually have to import LNG.
 
Indeed, we are still burning peat, a unique and vulnerable ecosystem. Personally I'd rather burn the much cleaner natural gas.
 
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