James Murray

Things look grim in the markets right now, but at least the U.S. economy wasn’t already being propped up by a massive speculative AI bubble that is highly sensitive to rising energy costs.

Rabobank on the unfolding worst case scenario:

Again, if the attacks don’t stop soon we’ll look back on $120 a barrel as a time of economic calm and munificence.

I am once again reposting this absurdly useful essay from Tim and Kate, because not enough of you have read it.

Agree entirely. But the problem is that trying not to transition too painfully is so often used as a reason for yet more emissions at a time when global emissions are still rising.

That would make a lot more sense. But politically that’s not even close to being on the table. The more likely outcome is more drilling and fewer measures to try and tackle demand, meaning higher emissions for longer.

That doesn’t seem to be how Tories and Reform see it. They are arguing that a N Sea bonanza (for which there are no guarantees it actually exists) is part and parcel of the strategy to ditch decarbonisation policies.

It doesn’t matter if boosting supply doesn’t impact efforts to curb demand, but that’s not what many of the people advocating for more drilling want to happen. They want to boost supply and demand. And if everyone applies the same logic it’s 4C+ of warming and all that comes with it.

Genuine question: if there is a big find, and it’s a big if, what do you do about the resulting emissions? How do you convince every country not to keep looking for their own big find?

Yeah, it’s such a hand wavy argument and often made by those who when in government failed to build new reactors. By all means make the case for a more ambitious nuclear program, but I do wish they’d stop pretending it doesn’t come with huge challenges of its own.

A third runway, but only for electric planes The government insists airport expansion can be made compatible with climate goals, but how would you go about proving that will be the case?

I have a semi-serious similar proposal for new runways. www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/44...

Am sure that will be where the Tories and Reform land, without ever referencing the cost implications of building a whole new fleet of nukes (and ignoring how in 14 years the Tories built half of one reactor that’s insanely over budget).

And they also have an obligation to recognise that climate change is real and advocating for more fossil fuels has consequences.

But those advancing such arguments have an obligation to recognise there’s a large risk the gains would be an extremely marginal and a meaningful risk it distracts from a clean energy transition that is highly likely to be much more important.

There is a good faith argument for more drilling centred on energy security in a very dangerous world (although it’s notable it’s calling for the same policy as the bad faith climate denialist arguments).

Every country with reserves can make an argument that their production makes sense for their energy security and tax base. If they all keep trying to produce ever more fossil fuels then we’re looking at 4C+ of warming in the lifetime of people alive today and all the catastrophe that comes with it.

The hope is there’s not much oil and gas out there, so it doesn’t make a huge difference. But there is diplomatic value in the fight to get all countries to decarbonise in clearly demonstrating that we are moving beyond fossil fuels and halting exploration.

And then, of course, there’s climate change. The piece makes no mention of the additional emissions that would result from more North Sea drilling, nor the associated carbon capture and removal costs of trying to deal with them.

Plus anyone who has studied the Trumpist tactics of those attacking net zero surely knows that without North Sea licenses to go after they would just move onto the next deeply dubious argument against decarbonisation.

Maybe it helps at the margins with the tax base and energy security, and maybe it helps neutralise some of the political attacks on net zero (which is why some green figures are backing a rethink), but the suggestion it meaningfully improves UK energy independence is wishful thinking.

Maybe there’s a big find waiting out there, nobody knows for sure, but all the evidence suggests it’s pretty unlikely and what’s left will be increasingly expensive to get at.

It’s not just that little can be done by this autumn. Little can be done this side of 2030 and it’s highly probably little can be done, full stop, given the maturity of the N Sea basin. This much shared Carbon Brief graph says it all.

Energy security rests not with the US but in the North Sea We must be able to keep the lights on and our houses warm without relying on the goodwill of Donald Trump

This is much better than the usual ‘drill, baby, drill’ editorials. But it still overstates the case for new licenses by a sizeable margin and is guilty of a very big omission.
observer.co.uk/news/busines...

As always a thoughtful piece from Tim and honest in North Sea realities

My 2.5 points of difference
1) there is a lag between lower tax rates to boost investment/exploration and the increased supplies that lead to more income
1.5) UK is still a costlier, mature basin max exploration not guaranteed

This is incredibly on point.

Spot oil prices grab the news, but it’s the impact we’re about to witness to petrochemical and derivative production that should really scare the shit out of folks.

It’s the sort of shock that could ripple through our global industrial economy for many months.

Really intrigued as to how the politics of 'everything is more expensive, I really hate the PM, but I look over and the leader of the opposition is going "we shoulda bombed them, this war is great"' play out, but I wish we were conducting this experiment when I were, say, 80.

"As a nation, you either shape events or are shaped by them. I fear that in our handling of this crisis, we have fallen into the latter category. Britain had no affirmative role in the planning or execution of this operation. But that hasn’t protected our sovereign territory from attack, or insulated our economy from the aftershocks. We must learn the lessons of this episode."

False dichotomy and wishful thinking here from Sunak. The idea that UK involvement would have significantly changed Trump and Netanyahu's approach, or reduced the consequences for the UK, is laughable. More thoughtful than Johnson, but with the same simplistic vanity, the desire to feel in control.

I'm no fancy political consultant, but, hey, if you're in Dem comms, you should notice that Fox News panicked over Trump wearing a cheap Trump merch baseball cap to receive the bodies of soldiers he got killed for no reason he can articulate, and you should absolutely lean into that.

UK must be prepared for a price shock from the Iran war | Heather Stewart Governments are having to wake up to the fact they will have to take a closer interest in supply chains for essentials

Here we go again. This piece is entirely right that we need tools beyond interest rates for tackling price shocks (and clean tech has to be at the heart of what comes next).
www.theguardian.com/business/202...

UK must be prepared for a price shock from the Iran war | Heather Stewart Governments are having to wake up to the fact they will have to take a closer interest in supply chains for essentials

This week’s column - here we go again with another cost shock; as they become more common, given fractured geopolitics + climate crisis, we’re going to have to find new approaches besides whacking up interest rates:
www.theguardian.com/business/202...