The Oil Drum: Europe

Ryanair and the Italian government at odds with each other. This Ryanair advertising shows Italy's ministry for reforms, Mr. Umberto Bossi, in an occasion where he was expressing his disagreement with the words of the Italian national anthem. In the text, the Italian government is accused of "supporting Alitalia's high tariffs", "supporting the frequent Alitalia strikes" and "not caring about the Italian passengers". Ryanair is understandably angry at the preferential treatment that the Italian government is reserving to Alitalia, Italy's national air carrier. Alitalia is in danger of bankruptcy and has been recently saved by a hefty injection of public money.

This is the talk I was honored to deliver to ASPO Italy on 3rd May 2008 at their annual conference in Turin. 24 slides below the fold plus narrative of what I said on the day. The narrative boxes are below the slides.

An Italian translation of this post is available here. Thanks to Maurizio Moretto for the translation. Thanks are also due to Jean Laherrere of ASPO France for providing his interpretations of Russian and North African gas supplies.

The logo of the ASPOItaly-2 conference. It shows, superimposed to the classic ASPO peak, the mythical "post peak car", the battery powered, retrofitted Fiat 500

Conference report, many links and some pictures below the fold.

The waste crisis in Naples has been ongoing for more than a week by now. Today (Jan 7), the Italian newspapers are announcing the intervention of the army to retake some control of the situation.

Today (12/12/07) is the third day of lorry driver strikes in Italy. They are protesting over high fuel prices and theatening to bring the country to a halt. As of yesterday Reuters were reporting 80% of gas stations were without fuel.

You may have noted a couple of posts recently concerning the relationships between Gazprom and its customers.  More particularly the pressure being put on places such as Armenia, Belarus and now the UK to allow Gazprom to take over the distribution companies for the natural gas.  Well, just in case the message wasn't getting through, there now comes a new threat. The West has been benefiting too long from Russian largesse, in terms of oil availability.

Russia plans to cut oil supplies to Europe, diverting shipments from "overfed" European markets to Asia, Semyon Vainshtok, president of pipeline monopoly Transneft, said in an interview published Monday.

"We have overfed Europe with oil. Every economics textbook says that surplus supply lowers prices," Vainshtok said in an interview published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "But we can't reduce supply -- all our exports are oriented toward Europe."

That will change with the construction of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, which will feed energy-hungry Asian markets with up to 1.6 million barrels of oil per day, Vainshtok said.

"As soon as we turn to China, South Korea, Australia, Japan, it will immediately take away a portion of oil from our European colleagues," Vainshtok said.

The China Daily is carrying a story that the gas-fired power plants in East China are unable to get enough natural gas to operate.

The shortage of natural gas has put the bulk of China's gas-fired power plants on the verge of closure, and industry leaders are calling for the government to trim its gas power development plans.
Due to the lack of gas supplies in East China, gas-fired power generation units with a total capacity of as much as 4 gigawatts (GW) must remain unused in the region where the country's biggest gas pipeline ends, Wang Yonggan, secretary general of China Electricity Council (CEC), said.
The same is true with the energy-guzzling southern areas of China, primarily driven the fast-growing regional economy of Guangdong Province.
"In the south, the construction completion of a gas power plant also means it's shutdown - because there is no gas to run it," Wang said over the weekend at a power conference hosted by CEC, the industry association of China's electricity generators.

Although the country uses gets about 2% of it's electric power from gas  plans are to triple this use by 2010 and double that again by 2020.

(UPDATE:Although off topic GeoPoet's comment, attached below, is worth reading).

Gas is, of course, as was discussed in comments yesterday, also used directly for heating and the article gives some numbers

Perhaps it is a little harsh to note, as the world begins to celebrate the Olympics, that gas supplies from Russia, through Ukraine to the host country, Italy, remain reduced.

And with that dour note to start what will be, I hope a happy weekend for you all, the floor is yours  . . .