UK exports unusually high amounts of natural gas and citizens buy it back again

twitter.com

3 points·stichers··3 comments

I understood the claims of the British government for energy sovreignty to not be dependent on hostile nations (:cough:ussia) not the Netherlands, not when the key company in the sector is a semi-public Anglo-Dutch merger. More importantly, the decisions are based on market prices, not political gamesmanship. I’m the first to criticise oil & gas company for playing fast and loose with the rule of law, and cosying with dubious government but exporting Noerth Sea methane to one shore or another isn’t really it. It’s a bad look, for sure but no where near the efforts to rebrand subsidies for renewable energy in their favour.

The point about fracking stands though, right? Isn't the argument that we may have to cause some environmental damage in the name of plentiful, cheap energy? Then that energy gets harvested and, guess what, it isn't plentiful or cheap either.

Fracking is a complicated problem: there’s both the mechanical effect and the chemials added there; there’s the dynamic between dependancies on foreign dictators and local harm… A lot of what has been done falls within the tamer side of oil company playbook (seed disent at local assembly in Texas, rather than fund a genocide on Nigeria) but it’s still plenty reprehensible.

One aspect of fracking that I want to know more about is geothermal: no need for chemicals, renewable, under-explored for now. It could be worst because it’s usually deeper, or it could help a lot. Experts mention there has been progress on earthquakes…

Then again, saying that means oil companies will frack for natural gas, claim it’s for geothermal research and leave the whell untapped when the price goes down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com