Energy Rapid Fire

It has been a quarter of very big events. As far as international energy scenario is concerned, these news are what big enough to make into my Twitter feeds. A very, very quick shots in fact these are missed:

1: Ukraine issue prompted Russia to squeeze down its gas supply to and via Ukraine. Affected region includes very much of Europe. Some countries like Finland have been 100% depended on Russia, so heavy impact on their economies expected.

2: Ukraine is a major producer of Maize. But energy crisis may soar up also its food price which will affect the global food price.

3: Russian still needs to sell its gas, or this move will adversely affect its economy. So new customer hunt starts…and ends: Enter China. China, a fast growing economy with increasing energy needs, is all set to become the major energy consumer of Russian resources in coming years.

4: Russia gives a further blow to western economy by prompting its major energy firm, Gazprom, to move from Dollars to Euros as primary business currency. This move may be in response to the sugarcoated card US played by declaring Russian existing oil drilling machines and technologies to be too primitive and damaging to environment, and hence must be banned.

5: Midst all this web, oil companies from everywhere are now trying to tap the oil resources in the Arctic region. To this the global community of activists, especially Greenpeace, responded heavily since this means irreversible loss to the endangered Arctic biosphere.

6: So the western countries are now looking out for oil which will obviously lead to rise of oil prices in coming years…so US President Obama plays the next plan which nevertheless was welcomed by the environmentalists. To discourage dependence on oil (and Russia), US plans to invest on alternative energy sources. This move has already been initiated and currently there is this proposal to increase global price of one tonne carbon to €24 from current rate of €5.

7: Besides these events, the recent Turkey coal mine disaster brought a big movement among activists. Another event is the recent plan of Australian government to dump wastes on Great Barrier Reef. This may accelerate with the upcoming coal terminal at Queensland. WWF has pledged to protect the reef which, to the relief of campaigners, has made  Deutsche Bank, HSBC and more recently Royal Bank of Scotland to back out from financing the project, and the issue of declaring the reef as endangered has moved into the concerns of UNESCO.

 

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SaveTheArctic

Save the Arctic, the fast growing Greenpeace campaign to protect Arctic particularly from oil drilling and industrial fishing, released an infographic yesterday.

It shows the map of Arctic circle along with the locations of oil companies who have already proposed their plans to exploit the Arctic resources by 2020. Interestingly Greenpeace has launched the online action form to call its supporters to make Shell cut off its ties and plans with Gazprom in the Arctic. Now Gazprom is the same old Russian oil giant who was behind the imprisonment of Arctic 30.

And in case you would like to do your part for the big campaign then please click here 🙂

Surely, ice and oil should never mix well.

What’s Up with my Petrol Price?

Oh, I will be extremely brief here. Let’s see what we are paying when we pay INR 80/Litre.

There are two things: Base Price and Tax!

1: Base Price: This actually has a few components.

The Cost Price which includes the crude oil price, refining and marketing/transporting costs. In the crude oil bracket, from the perspective of India, 70-80% of the fraction is imported while rest is mined locally by Indian upstream oil companies like ONGC, OIL etc.

It is interesting to know that the locally harnessed oil is sold to petroleum marketing companies which are again majorly government owned. It is the imported oil which ranges 2-3 times the price (given international taxes, government policies and other geopolitical factors) of the locally mined oil which averagely brings the price a little low. The base price kind of comprises 40-45% of the petrol cost.

2: Tax: Rest is, yes baby, tax. Excise tax, education tax, state tax, VAT, custom duties, service tax, environmental charges etc. On a rough account despite the cheaper refining cost in India due to heavy tax burden the total shoots up way more than the prices in other countries.

Why so much tax then?

• A good fraction of government revenue comes from these taxes. Cutting this may directly affect the economy.
• In a country like India it is just believed that middle and upper class should bear the public burden.
• It is better than putting taxes on kerosene and diesel which can lead to imbalance of food and transport prices affecting the lower sections of population pyramid.
• Also lowering the price may lead to use of subsidies only to increase the petrol demand which will force India to multiply its petroleum imports which is already pocketing a big chunk of our import economy.
• No way will it lower the carbon emissions. With taxes there is a fair window for the carbon budgets to be transferred within the other government sectors and help buy international carbon credits.

Now why we don’t have any alternative clean solution or reliable public transport system is just another thing.

The Case of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plants

 

I was once discussing solid waste mafia issues in the state of Kerala with one of my colleagues at Center for Technological Alternatives for Rural Areas and then very subtly the topic shifted to how the government largely ignores the environmental issues in pursuit of short term goals and growth in a developing economy like India. My colleague very relevantly stated the example of the recent conflict between the local citizens and the center government plans of the ongoing nuclear reactor plant set ups at Kudankulam, a town in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. Back then I was just aware of the news via the daily headlines etc. Recently I caught up with a friend from Indian Institute of Mass Communication and the Kudankulam issue re-surfaced.

The Central Government plans of the upcoming Kudankulam nuclear reactors have been criticized and strongly opposed by the fishermen of the coastal villages from the neighboring districts. Apparently they were alarmed by the ongoing so-called rumors that the government is planning to mass evacuate around 100,000 citizens from the surrounding regions of the nuclear reactors within 30 km radius. But this is not the only thing that took away the peace of the local people. There were added fears that once the water coolant reactors will start to function, they will release enormous amount of hot water into the sea which will have a major impact on the nearby fish and marine life thus directly affecting the livelihood of the local Roman Catholic community constituting of around 7500 fishermen, who has no skills in any alternative professional activity. This piece also attracted the attention of environmentalists further snowballing when the government refused to reveal the exact location of the nuclear waste storage sites in the nearby harbor regions which was earlier planned to dispose off to Russia instead. There were also added rumors by some local ones claiming that the “poisonous gases” from the nuclear plants have already killed fishes in the nearby sea waters.

The locals clearly are seeing themselves as collateral damage in the plans of India to quickly climb into the ranking of an emerging superpower. There have been parked painted boat campaign protests and hunger strike where fishermen and their family members bury themselves waist eep in the beach sands with burning candle in the hands! Even disbelieving the government authorities, they claim that the nuclear reactors have not been commissioned yet since once they start functioning the above mentioned consequences will be inevitable. They even argue of the absence of any movement in the engine of the reactors and thus believe the government is bent on making them a victim without learning from the Fukushima accident early in the year of 2011 when the Kudankulum protests have also been started. So how careless can Indian government get?

Indian government has been giving technical reports from time to time in defense of their move to go with the nuclear reactor projects despite the sharp opposition. Although few things are still guarded fiercely by the state due to some security concern, the reports give relevant security measures that the scientists have considered for the safety of the reactors knowing very well how critical the whole issue has become now. The government had also consulted top scientists from Indian Space Research Organization study the fears raised about the security of the reactors.

The concern raised for the safety of marine life has been quite interesting since reportedly nowhere else in the world nuclear reactors have been known to raise such issues.  There were no such concerns with the older Indian nuclear reactors near the seas at Kalpakkam and Tarapur. Two third of the total energy from the reactors will go unused and has to be discharged by the condenser which in turn has to be cooled by water. This water will be brought in through gravity driven concrete pipes at the temperature of 32 degree Celsius. The outgoing water will have a raised temperature of about 37 degree Celsius, while as per the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board the safety limit is 39 degree Celsius. The pump house also has the mechanism of injecting air bubbles to the incoming water surface which may help the small fishes that may have been sucked in to stay at the upper surface before being safely ejected out into the sea.

The nuclear reactor has been claimed by its makers to be one of the most advanced nuclear reactors with dual dome structure to withstand tsunamis to air crashes. It has mechanisms to tackle hydrogen accumulation, radioactivity leakages and coolant deficiencies.  Unlike the Fukushima sister, this reactor has been built on land about 7.5 meters above mean sea level. The government has also been dismissing the rumors that it has plans to further acquire land for the project and trigger the evacuation of 100,000 citizens as feared by the peace protesters. Overall this case seems to be a classic modern example of clash between the ideas.

We have latest technology and an aspiring government to be at par with their international friends and improve the energy scenario in the nation while the local citizens are refusing to believe any of these explanations and are bend on to eliminate any risks that may pose a threat to their traditional work and environment. One may hope that a sophisticated touch of science education might have helped these people to calm down and understand the situation, but then history has given us enough lessons that things do not go as predicted at times. Overall the situation is interestingly tricky and let’s hope that the fishermen and the fishes stay preserved and flourishing. But the good news is that the government took really big steps in ensuring safety and environmental concerns around the setting up of the nuclear reactors.

Originally published at Ayyati.com