Suchergebnisse

The process of financial deregulation, and especially the dismantling of direct monetary controls, has been underway for some time now in many financially-developed economies, but little attention has been devoted to analysis of the issues involved in the academic literature. This book represents an attempt to remedy that deficiency providing, as it does, a detailed analysis of the programmes of financial deregulation pursued in the United Kingdom and Australia since 1970 and an assessment of the implications for monetary and prudential policy.

The recent adoption by the UK and Norway of net zero and climate neutrality targets by 2050 has galvanised the upstream oil and gas industry in both countries to adopt GHG emission reduction targets for 2030 and 2050 for the first time. Meeting these targets, ensuring an appropriate sharing of costs between investors and taxpayers and preserving investor confidence will present a lasting challenge to governments and industry, especially in periods of low oil and gas prices. The scale of the challenge on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) is far greater than on more mature UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) since the remaining resource base is much larger, the expected future production decline is less severe and the emission intensity on the NCS is already much lower (10 kg CO2e/boe) than on the UKCS (28 kgCO2e/boe) due to the long history of tighter emission standards and offshore CO2 taxation. Norway is expected to deliver future CO2 emission reduction through an extension of its existing powerfrom-shore investment programme. The high cost of such new investment, borne mainly by the state via the tax system, is a political and social choice made by Norway to reduce upstream CO2 emissions without giving up its commitment to develop its remaining resources of more than 50 bn boe and to preserve the source of its prosperity. In the UK upstream, the new industry target to reduce GHG emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 may demand less new capital but it will require the integration of emission abatement into the OGA's MER UK strategy, well-designed economic incentives, including possibly carbon pricing and fiscal reform, and behavioural changes from operators. The relatively short remaining economic life of many mature fields and the dispersed nature of offshore power demand penalises both power-from-shore and CCS as routes to least-cost emission reduction but future integration with offshore renewable electricity generation may offer abatement opportunities at larger installations or new field developments. Methane ...

The decline in indigenous gas production in Europe is an important issue as the region struggles to address its security of supply issues. Understanding the future of gas output is therefore of critical importance and having first addressed the future of the Norwegian Continental Shelf Marshall Hall now turns his attention to the UKCS. In this detailed and informative paper he not only provides an assessment of the resources still available in UK waters and the economics of their production, but also assesses regulatory issues and government policy that could promote increased output in future. He analyses projections of future UK gas production and provides important context for the assessment of the UK's offshore gas potential. At a time when gas continues to play a vital role in the country's energy mix, especially as coal is phased out, we believe that this paper is an important contribution to the debate around the future of gas in the UK.

Norwegian net gas production reached a record high of 122 bcm in 2017, confounding many industry observers who had in 2016 and 2017 been sceptical of the ability of the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) to maintain production at 110-115 bcm. In January 2018, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) made significant upward revisions to its gas production projections which now show output of 121-123 bcm pa from 2018 to 2022, declining to 112 bcm in 2025 and then stabilising at 90-92 bcm pa in 2030-35. This paper examines the reliability of the NPD's past projections and the plausibility of its updated projections based on published resource data, exploration activity, the capacity of onshore and offshore gas infrastructure, the demand for gas for improved oil recovery and published field development plans. It concludes that the recent revisions reflect a confident appraisal of the resource base and the numerous options for new gas development of existing fields and discoveries. The risk of failing to meet the updated projections to about 2027 appears to be low. Beyond 2027, the projections carry a progressively higher degree of geological, economic and political risk particularly in light of the recent lack of exploration success. By 2035, 30 bcm of the projected 90 bcm of annual gas production is expected to come from currently undiscovered resources. The visibility of future gas production has diminished in recent years because of the reduction in future delivery commitments in Statoil's gas sales portfolio. However, the reform of its gas sales since 2010 has conferred valuable new flexibility in future upstream investment decisions to develop and market NCS gas resources. The position of Norway as a reliable and competitive supplier of both contracted and flexible gas to NW Europe appears to be secure for the foreseeable future.

ABSTRACTMore than a decade has passed since the International Panel on Climatic Change began to study (in depth) the possibility that the global climate was changing. Increasing attention is also being paid to the impact of such changes on society in general, and on the planning and management of water resources. Not least among the water resources planning problems is the estimation of the changes which might occur in public water‐supply demands. Such changes are notoriously difficult to evaluate, particularly in the UK where most domestic premises remain un‐metered. Elsewhere, econometric models involving climatic parameters as independent variables have had some success, but a recent application of this approach in the UK was unable to identify particular parameters which had a consistent influence over the summer period. This lack of success might be partly caused by the public reaction to summer conditions being a complex function of several parameters, such as duration of sunshine, temperature and rainfall. This complexity has already been recognised by climatologists, who have devised forms of summer indices involving weighted combinations of climatic variables to determine how 'good' or 'bad' a particular period might be perceived by the general public. The use of one such summer index to explain the variations in an index of demand for public water supply in the London supply area has shown that simple and consistent relationships can be derived. Application of these relationships to scenarios of changes in temperature, sunshine duration and rainfall totals for the year 2050 shows an increase of 0.6‐ 2.9 index points in water‐supply demand over the 1950‐1990 period average.