The Madness of Chancellor George’s begging bowl
They've gone too far this time . . . I mean Osborne & Co with their begging bowl in China.
Aussies show way forward in response to climate change
I have a high regard for Australia and the Australians. Being a motorsport fan I can't help but feel that any country that runs a V8 Supercar racing series must have a lot going for it.
Is carbon capture and storage in the last chance saloon?
In a move that really did take the industry by surprise the new Norwegian government has announced that it is shutting down its full-scale carbon capture project at Mongstad.
Driving forward the debate on fuelling Scotland’s future
How we're going to keep our transport going and keep ourselves warm in the future is a topic for discussion that can so easily become overheated - no pun intended - because of the range of sometimes diametrically opposing views on issues including good old climate change, peak oil, shale gas, impact on food supplies and so on and so forth.
Dick Winchester: Nice try, but no coconut for Aberdeen
Apologies in advance but I've come over all parochial and am going to discuss Aberdeen itself. I've spent the best part of 40 years either working out of or in the place and have watched it evolve into what it is now.
Dick Winchester: Indy vote will play crucial role in industry future
The outcome of the referendum on Scottish independence next year will be critical in determining how the future of energy and particularly oil and gas pans out.
Dick Winchester: Oh joy – another North Sea review
Ed Davey - UK secretary of state for energy and climate change - has made my day. I was mulling over what to write about for the July issue of Energy but then up popped Ed with the announcement that he's going to have another review of how to maximise the economic benefits of North Sea oil and gas.
Dick Winchester: A question of trust
When it was announced that BP, Shell, Statoil and maybe others we don't know about were being investigated by the European Union for potentially having manipulated the oil price I have to admit to not being at all surprised. Disappointed and concerned perhaps but not actually surprised.
Does the Treasury care about renewables at all?
The "system" the government has set up isn't aimed at creating a renewables industry but developing mechanisms to achieve the various government policy aims on carbon emission reductions, percentage of electricity from renewable sources and so on and so forth, writes Dick Winchester.
EMEC’s customer base has little UK content
When Dick Winchester was asked to analyse the list of companies testing at the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney, he was not prepared for what it would tell him.
UK oil & gas industrial strategy – it’s good to talk
The Government's latest attempt at a strategy for oil and gas was published in March but its impact was somewhat diluted by the announcement on the same day of yet another change of energy minister.
Proof of the pudding – If you don’t own it then you simply don’t control it
It's great being proven right. I've long argued that who owns the companies that make up the energy, or indeed any other, sector is important because if you don't own it then you simply don't control it. The free market ideologues argue that it doesn't matter who owns what provided the jobs are anchored here and it's that attitude which has prevailed in the UK for the last 40 years or so.
Is the UK suffering from ‘Dutch Disease’
No . . . it's got nothing to do with trees but an intriguing economic phenomenon that I have to admit I'd never come across until I heard it being discussed on a recent radio programme.
Forecasters must be independent . . . free of any political bias
If there is one thing that particularly annoys me it's journalists and economists who have little real knowledge of the energy sector, not just passing themselves off as oil industry experts, but being accepted as such by some politicians because the story they're being told by them just happens to fit their particular political aims.
UK Govt’s newest apology for an Energy Policy
I was once told that if Moses had been a Lib Dem he'd have come down from Mt Sinai with ten "really jolly good suggestions".
New generation offshore technologies vital to UK North Sea’s prosperity
At the recent ITF technology showcase in Aberdeen BP's North Sea regional president, Trevor Garlick was reported as saying "If new technology is not developed fast enough the life of the North Sea oil and gas industry could be shortened".
This is no way to run a country or its companies
I concluded some time ago that UK Business Secretary Vince Cable was all frills and no knickers but was astonished that he said of the now thankfully dead BAe merger with EADS: "I don't worry about foreign ownership."
Skills gap hardly new but it must be solved
The badly named "skills gap" is not a new problem. We've known about it for a long time.
UK’s transport policy’s right off the rails
If for some peculiar reason I had actually wanted to go to London to watch any of the Olympics my choices of how to get there would have been to fly, drive, catch a train or take one of those long distance buses.
Norway – great leaders of the technology race
When people ask me where are our equivalents of the Norwegian companies Kvaerner, Aker, Kongsberg, Hitec, Framo and others such as Petroleum Geo-Services and Dolphin Geophysical or offshore drillers like Odfjell or Seadrill, or the powerful armada of offshore support vessels, then I really can't give them an answer.
No shipbuilding please – we’re British!
I like to think I'm fairly well educated, worldly and reasonably au fait (that's French) with how and why certain things happen particularly when it comes to industrial and business issues even when those issues are of a political nature.
Scottish Independence – Implications for the energy sector
I take it pretty much for granted that if you're an "Energy" reader then you're someone that's curious about what goes on in the world.
Year dominated by wind, waste, whisky and waves
Gosh. Is it really a whole year since the last All Energy Exhibition and Conference and in that year have we actually made much progress towards building that broad-based clean energy industry we all dream about?
Gas Wars – shaking up the industry
A few years ago if someone had suggested that conventional offshore gas field development programmes and the LNG market would soon be under threat from shale gas they would have been thought at best eccentric and at worst suffering from some sort of delusionary illness.
Why size really does count
We have a problem. Put bluntly there are now far too many indigenous companies getting snapped up by overseas buyers.