Our Scottish contributor, JL Daeschler, brought this brilliant Sunday Times piece by Gillian Blowditch (pictured) to my attention. A few excerpts follow, but I recommend that you read the entire column.
“I’m writing this column from Applecross in the Scottish Highlands, where the view from the window is of the Cuillins. These immutable behemoths squat beneath an expanse of sky in which the light is invariably diffuse. It never gets old.” (I second that emotion!)
“Renewables are a vital part of our energy mix, but they require gas-fired back-ups. Yet, instead of tapping into our North Sea reserves, we’re committed to importing foreign gas. It’s not just an issue around energy security and cost, it affects our trade deficit and competitiveness against countries using cheaper, home-grown supplies. It increases our dependence on foreign supply chains.”
“Meanwhile, we risk losing the valuable skills and expertise we have built up over 50 years of North Sea exploration. We are all paying the price for this obsession through higher energy bills and job losses.”
“It is difficult to imagine a world in which it makes sense to import oil and gas but not produce it, while forcing our skilled workforce to work offshore in far flung corners of the globe, especially when we are importing from Norway, which is extracting oil and gas from the same seabed for which we are refusing to grant licences.”
“According to a Survation poll commissioned by the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce and published last week, 68 per cent of voters want the country’s demand for oil and gas to be produced domestically, rather than imported.”
“We all want to protect our environment and Scotland, with its vast natural resources and expertise in energy, should be leading the way. Instead, we have squandered an opportunity in favour of a facile show of moral posturing.”
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 