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Saturday 26 May 2012

Del Boy Misses The Shale Gas Boat

Sadly, when James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole departed for his triumphal tour of the Dominions recently, he figured out how to book a return flight, and is now back among his adoring fans (Sid and Doris Bonkers), expounding the usual litany of unresearched nonsense, backed up with sneering, abuse and phrases enclosed in his patented Air Quotes (tm).


Del Boy attempts to wow Gretchen Carlson

And, such is the paucity of invention chez Del Boy, this means returning for the umpteenth time to the subject of energy policy, the current state of which displeases The Great Man deeply. Nobody in charge has sufficient brain power to see the light as Del has done, or their appearance does not meet with his approval, and he has concluded that the UK is therefore doomed.

Moreover, he says “Global warming” (note Air Quotes (tm)) is over, and that Barack Obama says so. He does? Well, no he doesn’t: Del Boy has taken a climate sceptic blog that says what he wants to hear and declared it to be The Whole Unvarnished Truth. The Prez is not supporting his cause, and neither is anyone else outside the usual circle of flat earth ranters and frothers.

That Delingpole listens only to those within that circle means he missed the news last March: far from there being a looming shortage of generating capacity, the need for gas generation, estimated at around 5GW, will be dwarfed by the combination of that “under construction” (3.3 GW) and that “approved and seemingly going ahead” (9.7GW). That’s a surplus of 8GW in capacity.

On top of that, the clamour by Del Boy and his pals for more effort to be piled into shale gas exploration and production may not be based on such a sound economic basis after all: the lower gas prices seen across the USA are down more to oversupply and companies desperately trying to hold on to the land where they’re drilling for fear of losing their rights to it.

So forget all those puff pieces in The Register. Gas producers across the USA are finding themselves making very little – not enough to pay down their debts – and smaller operators are selling out. In some parts of the country, gas production has actually declined recently. It is that kind of reality that Government – what Del calls “lame-brained, out of touch, know nothing politicians” – has to confront.

When James Delingpole says that his answer “is obvious to anyone with half a brain or the merest smattering of knowledge about Britain's approaching energy gap”, and that whatever Ed Davey says on the subject “is either wrong, stupid, fatuous, economically suicidal, a total misrepresentation of the truth – or all five put together”, you can see he’s talking out of the back of his neck.

Still, it keeps the Bonkers family feeling happy, so that’s all right, then.

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