"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Bacton Gas Explosion - immediate gas price rise in UK of 18%


Gas pipelines blow up - "THE BIG BANG THEORY – The Bigger the Bang, the Louder the Silence 04/08/04 " identifies the problems the UK faces in energy security.

Late sleepers in Ath, 30 km SW of Brussels were woken by a massive explosion at 8.55 am on Friday July 30th 2004. A gas pipeline exploded.

Between 12 and 16 people died immediately and some 200 were injured of whom 35 who suffered massive burns (many of them emergency service staff) and are not expected to survive.
The UK media offered no comment or analysis on this massive and lethal incident and turned to the important issues of the day, Cherie Blair's swimwear, Lady Di's non-functioning fountain and the endless sex sagas of the denizen's of London's Soho Square.

Silence. A silence induced by an unwillingness to either rule out the possibility of terrorist action or even identify how such an accident (if that is what it was – and nobody has ever decided what caused it) punches a hole in the alleged UK “Energy Policy”.

Now 4 years later there is still do definitive efitive view about the cause of the explosion.

Tonight we learn that there has been an explosion at the Bacton Gas terminal in Norfolk 18 miles NW of Norwich.

Bacton is a sprawling complex of five gas terminals, built over the last 35 years is the largest gas terminal complex in the UK. Gas lands onshore at the three producer terminals from the Southern North Sea and from the Shearwater Elgin Area Line (SEAL) and is then distributed to UK customers via the National Grid terminal, or to Belgium via the Interconnector system. When in reverse flow mode, the Interconnector Bacton Terminal is used to import gas into the UK.

Ten fire engines attended the incident, which was described as ``very large-scale'' by the Norfolk Fire Service press office today. The plant sustained some ``structural damage'' from an explosion, the fire service said. All 17 staff on the site at the time were accounted for and by 7.30pm Shell UK Exploration said: “The fire has now been extinguished and the plant has been shut down safely.”

No gas was flowing through either the Shell Bacton or Bacton Seal terminals, data from National Grid showed.

Total SA halted flows from the Elgin-Franklin fields in the North Sea, which ship gas to Bacton, spokeswoman Jenny Costelloe said. Those fields can pump 280,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, including 175,000 of gas condensate, a type of light oil.

Flows through the BBL pipeline from the Netherlands were unaffected by the fire, according to National Grid data on Bloomberg. The fuel was arriving into the U.K. at a rate of about 35 million cubic meters a day at 7:58 p.m. GMT

Within-day U.K. gas prices rose on the APX Gas UK exchange, trading at 61.5 pence a therm at 8:08 p.m. GMT, (equivalent of $12.33 per million British thermal units) compared with about 52.5 pence ( a rise of 18%) before the blaze was reported. (A therm is 100,000 British thermal units (BTU))

``Traders taking gas in through Bacton will have to replace those flows,'' said Patrick Heather, an industry consultant and former head of gas trading at BG Group Plc, said in a phone interview. ``The southeast is where the demand is. Bacton is our physical link to the continent.''
Gas Trading

Bacton can handle as much as 20% of the U.K.'s net gas imports, Heather estimated.

News of the blaze came after normal trading hours for most gas brokers. The APX exchange is used by National Grid Plc, operator of the U.K.'s gas pipeline network, to buy and sell the fuel to balance daily demand.

Gas traders will ``pounce'' on the Bacton news when trading resumes tomorrow, Heather said. ``At this time of night it will just be balancing trading.''

The APX Gas UK exchange is used by National Grid Plc, operator of the U.K.'s gas pipeline network, to buy and sell the fuel to balance daily demand and provides a real time twenty-four hours a day facility.

Further report from Eastern Daily Press 8 pm which suggests that eveyting is damped down, any fire is out . No offficial public statements have been made by the Fire Services, Terminal operators or the National Grid. 9.0 GMT. At 10.00 pm GMT Police said ave given the all-clear after the explosion and fire at Bacton gas terminal. Officers used an automated system to tell people in 360 homes in and around the village that they were safe, that the fire was out and the plant had been shut down safely.


Gobal oil and gas prices tend to move in unison and in the US Since September 2007, the prices of oil have increased from approximately $75 per barrel to over $100 per barrel and natural gas has increased from $6.13/mmBtu to a recent price of $9.08/mmBtu, a 48 percent increase. Se Chart which is close of business Wednesday 27th.
Today - Crude oil for April delivery rose $3, or 3 percent, to $102.64 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) . Futures rose to $102.97 a barrel, the highest since trading began in 1983. Prices are up 66 % from a year ago.

The Oil Drum has this excellent article posted today on North American natural gas decline. There are interesting comments on the mi of using LNG as a agas source - LNG has a higher energy content and has limited use for domestic equipment currently in use.

UPDATE : Natural gas on APX is being quoted today 57.44 (1.00 GMT) - from 52.55 yesterday before Bacton was hit. You can see the effect on quoted prices in the graph from yesterday.

Oddly enough there is little comment in the UK Press today about the incident.

Bloomberg report ;

Investigation Underway

Shell said an investigation is underway into the fire at the terminal in Norfolk, England, and it was too early to comment on the cause. The facility sustained ``structural damage'' from the blast, according to a recorded message from the local fire service yesterday.

``We have no date for the re-start of the terminal,'' Shell said in an e-mailed statement today. ``Gas supply to the U.K. is unaffected.'' Shell has been in contact with the National Grid who confirmed there is ``more than enough supply coming into the country from all the various sources,'' according to the statement.


``National Grid are confident there will be no detrimental effect on security of supply,'' Shell
said. ``Only the Shell terminal at the Bacton site is affected.''

Supply Draw

Gas shippers started to draw supplies of the fuel from liquefied natural gas stocks at the Glenmavis facility in Scotland today, the first time since Feb. 20. Rough, the U.K.'s biggest gas-storage facility, was 34 % full as of Feb. 28, with more than 26 days of supply at maximum withdrawal rate in stock, according to National Grid data. Smaller storage sites are 60 % full with 10.8 day's supply, while LNG stocks are 67 % full, the grid data show. (The loss of the 2 Shell pipelines at Bacton = 13% of UK gas supply)

Dutch gas for delivery March 3 at the Title Transfer Facility rose 2.8 % to 23.75 euros (US
$36.12) a megawatt-hour, according to Spectron Group Plc. That equals $10.59 a million British thermal units. Next-month gas gained 4.4 percent to a month-high of 23.65 euros = 55.3 p Therm.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please, please can you give a source for the governor (or on board of governors) at Haut de La Garenne. Trying desparately to establish solid news base for this.

ziz said...

No solid source but referred to continually and commentators on previous articles (did you mis-post here?) .

There is an assumption (maybe misplaced) that having been repeated so often no refutation has appeared . ergo it is true.

e-mails received say a great deal more about the Bailiff which if untrue would be actionable, but are not supported by any evidence.

Probably he may have been Chairman of the Governors, inthe sense that the Queen is the Patron of many charities, purely titular.

Whatever the position his inaction has been successful in concealing what is evidently a sordid conspiracy of silence.

EXposure will flush them out ... sun;ight is a powerful disinfectant.

Anonymous said...

Tony B and Shutter clearly do not realize that:

Philip Bailhache as HM Bailiff is the son and grandson of a Freemason.

William Bailhache as HM Attorney General is the son and grandson of a Freemason.

There are far too many basic CONFLICTS OF INTEREST in relation to the present position of Jersey Law & Jersey Politics.

HM Bailiff has a legal duty to hear and try cases but his "brother" has a LEGAL DUTY whether "IN THE INTERESTS OF JUSTICE" to bring an action.

Why kind of law is this - raising such a CONFLICT OF INTEREST!

What of the separation of powers of every legal constitution.

Do you not know anything about basic matters of LAW in EVERY democratic society with a basic democratic RULE OF LAW and basic democratic traditions???

There cannotr be a head of the JUDICIARY who sits as head of the LEGISLATURE!!!

This emasculates & compromises the LAW & POLITIC PROCESS of the country.

As a Freemason every Freemason has a sworn duty to protect HM BAILIFF when he is "in distress".

This necessitates the need to use deceit or subterfuge in order to protect him from non Brethren.

But of course you know this basic fact - you appear to be pretending to be stupid to protect him and others in great authority whom I know abused their trust by going rather too far...


I talk with authority as I am a member of THE LIGHTBRINGERS as the EMISSARIES OF JAHBULON... based at our lodge in Stopford Road, St Helier... the light of the Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU)...

A strange system of OUR Morality, Veiled in OUR Allegory and Illustrated by OUR Symbols...


33 (thirty three degrees of us ALL on the SQUARE circumscribed by the Compasses of the CIRCLE)...


WE destroyed them for our pleasure...

THEY will now seek Damages for their treasure...

HM CROWN will fall...

Our CROWN is Our Master's mawl...

CO-HEN is Our man...

CO-MEN is Our den...

(C) Very Seriously Disorganised Criminals 2002/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - copy anything you wish