Aardgas

In the Dutch media today was the news that “NAM finds large natural gas field in Friesland“. According to the article it’s the largest natural gas field found in the Netherlands in seventeen years time, four billion cubic metres in size.

But how big is that really? According to the NAM in all of the Netherlands 53,3 billion cubic metres of natural gas was produced in 2009. I would expect that number to have risen a bit in the past two years but I can’t find any information on that. So let’s keep it at 53,3 billion cubic metres per year.

This means that the natural gas in the newly discovered field is worth less than a month (27 days) of current production. The fact that it’s seventeen years ago that a field of this size has been found clearly shows that we’re (literally) burning though our natural gas supply at a very brisk rate.

This all makes it seem logical for our government to make preparations for the import of natural gas from Russie through pipelines and from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in liquid form by ship. It’s absolutely no coincidence that queen Beatrix is currently there on a state visit.

The big question, of course, is if we’re prepared to make ourselves dependent on countries of questionable long-term stability for a substance on which our economy has depended for decades? With large scale trade we’d be supporting regimes which are at best not very democratic (Russia) and at worst simply undemocratic (Qatar). Each cubic metre of natural gas we burn to heat badly insulated houses or generate electricity to power inefficient appliances we increase that support. The more we become dependent on countries like that for something essential like energy the more difficult it will become to criticise things like a lack of democracy or human rights in these countries.

It’s something to think about…

(And this is all without the decreasing influence we’ll have on the price, the fact that burning natural gas puts CO2 in the atmosphere and the fact that a seemingly stably supply of natural gas would make it easier to keep postponing real investments in sustainably sources like sun and wind.)

As this article regards a decidedly  Dutch phenomenon – we’re voting for our States-Provincial – I won’t translate it.

Subsidies on fossil energy...

There’s been a lot of complaints lately, especially from within liberal circles, about subsidies on renewable energy. The term ‘leftist hobbies’ was coined in the Netherlands, and it seems to have fallen into popular use. That’s unfortunate because not everything can be expressed in money. How much is a clean environment worth? Or a low CO2-level in the atmosphere? Or an icecap? What’s independence from unreliable or even unfriendly countries worth?

It’s doubly unfortunate that, in fact, the worldwide subsidies for the renewable sector are dwarfed () by the subsidies for the fossil sector. Research reveals that the fossil sector gets about twelve times as much money as the renewable sector.

What to do? Increase the subsidies on renewable energy by twelve times? Better not. I am liberal enough to see the many disadvantages of keeping an army of civil servants unnecessarily at work. I hope we’re sensible enough to (quickly) reduce the fossil subsidies to zero to that both energy sources can compete on even terms. Unfortunately the fossil sector has many old vested interests who will not let go of these sources of funding easily.

Only time will tell if we’re able to make sensible decisions about this. Unfortunately the (probable) coming Dutch right-wing cabinet doesn’t give much hope in this area…

As this article specifically regards the Dutch general elections, and I do not have much time, I have chosen not to translate it into English. If a large supply of time suddenly drops out of the sky I might do this at a later date (but do not count on it)