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Gas pipelines, oil pipelines and terminals – all for consumer benefit. But is it true?

Date: September 28^th 2009 Author: Božo Dukić Category: Expert commentary
Topic: Natural gas , Oil and oil derivates

Changes in the way our housing and business facilities are being built have changed the ways of heating that we employ. First we used wood, switching to coal with the industrialisation. And after World War II, oil industry developed along with the automotive industry.

Intense oil production began and with it oil refineries have emerged with heavy fuel oil and fuel oil as two of the derivatives. Both were intended primarily for end users for heating and hot water preparation. When they discovered that oil reserves were limited, oil industry extended their offer with natural gas and liquefied petrol gas. Since gas is deemed as one of the purer energy products, gasification started to sprawl along with gas pipeline networks.

Various energy sources continue to trace the consumer's needs of comfort and everyone along the supply chain does their best to serve these need as best as they can.

Owing to the fact that burning fossil fuel contributes to climate changes with greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere, international community adopted the so-called Kyoto Protocol eight years ago. With it, the world leaders committed to a 20 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The Protocol was named after Japanese city Kyoto in which it had been signed. A similar treaty is to be adopted on the European level within a year, with Member States making commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuels and therewith cut their emissions by 25 per cent while at the same time boosting the use of sustainable energy sources.

In order to satisfy the customers, the major gas dealers are striving to secure gas supply regardless what the season of the year. Some intend to reach this goal by building more gas pipelines, the others by building gas terminals and the third by building an oil pipeline.

Politics also wants to take part in this race, dividing Europe in the pro-West and the pro-Russia parts. Both pipelines – South Stream and Nabucco – are to supply Europe with gas from the countries that are under Russia’s influence as well as from those that are not. On the other hand, the oil pipeline tries to find its way from the Black Sea coast to the Gulf of Trieste, crossing the Balkans thereby. Another set of eager participants in the race is those investing into gas terminals, planning to transport liquid gas by sea and return it to its gaseous state at the terminals.

And all this is being done in the name of satisfying the consumer’s needs! Yet none of the investors have asked themselves the vital question of what the consumer actually needs, what he wants and what brings him the future.

It is true that there are more of us with each day passing as it is true that building principles have been changing, and that buildings are being increasingly more heat insulated. With that however, the investors are hardly interested in the impending changes to the regulation on the use of energy sources.

Slovenian media and probably those across and outside Europe just as well dedicate increasingly more time and space to the issue of growing climate change and to the fact that the use of fossil fuels and that of gas and fuel oil in heating are accounted for escalating greenhouse gas emissions. European Union plans to curb carbon emissions through legal enforcement. If any of the Member States fails to cut its emissions, it will need to buy emission allowances from those peers that have managed to reduce their emissions adequately.

It is irrelevant whose is the capital in the organisations that wish to build terminals, gas and oil pipelines so as to improve supply security for the European consumers, for the bottom line is that in fact the objective of these investors is to keep making giant profits and continue to line their pockets on the consumer’s account. And what is worse, they wish to push the use of their energy product despite the urge to reduce carbon emissions in view of the threatening climate changes.

None of the investors has analysed what is the actual need for their energy product, nor have they foreseen that in light of reducing carbon emissions, the consumers would gradually switch to sustainable energy sources which create no greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no doubt that we are undergoing climate changes for there is footage of Earth’s ice cap in the North getting smaller, and climate change is surely to be blamed for glaciers decline in the Alps. Additionally, these changes contribute their share in severe summer storms which have been causing a lot of damage. Sea level is also sure to rise due to melting of the ice. And for the moment we can only imagine what could a rise of the sea level by merely one meter cause to seaside towns such as Piran in Slovenia.

What can be said on top of the above mentioned is that when it comes to building the planned facilities, there is surely too little consideration of the consumers and their protection. Investors are good at lobbying with state officials whose task is to help with the necessary papers. And some countries back this up, doing nothing to boost the use of renewable energy sources for they are well aware that if they did, this would reduce the pressure to invest into a specific energy product.

I do hope that this letter is a warning to all readers to closely monitor the conduct of state officials and report any suspicious moves – whether it is a word-of-mouth help or any other conduct that the investors benefit from – to the media. Any conduct that works against the use of sustainable energy sources and does not enable state-allocated funds for it despite of this being foreseen in the state plans is also regarded as favouring the investors.

On conclusion, I wish to say that not long ago, all gas and oil pipelines and terminals could be deemed a historic reminder but today, they bear witness of obstructing the advancement of technology.

Bozo Dukic is Head of Institute for Renewable Energy

The opinions expressed in the commentaries are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Energetika.NET editorial board.

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