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The Ships Full of Gas Waiting Off Europe’s Coast

posted by janrinok on Thursday October 27 2022, @09:28PM   
from the idle-gas dept.

upstart writes:

The ships full of gas waiting off Europe's coast:

The huge tankers are waiting. Off the coasts of Spain, Portugal, the UK and other European nations lie dozens of giant ships packed full of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Cooled to roughly -160C for transportation, the fossil fuel is in very high demand. Yet the ships remain at sea with their prized cargo.

After invading Ukraine in February, Russia curtailed gas supplies to Europe, sparking an energy crisis that sent the price of gas soaring. That led to fears of energy shortages and eye-watering bills for consumers.

[...] So why are ships loaded with LNG just hanging around Europe, exactly? The answer, as you might have guessed, is a little complicated.

Someone else who has watched the accumulation of vessels is Fraser Carson, a research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. This month, he counted 268 LNG ships on the water worldwide - noticeably above the one-year average of 241. Of those currently at sea, 51 are in the vicinity of Europe.

He explains that European nations plunged into a gas-buying spree over the summer that aimed to fill onshore storage tanks with gas. This was to ensure that heaps of fuel would be available to cover energy needs this winter.

The original target was to fill storage facilities to 80% of their total capacity by 1 November. That target has been met, and exceeded, far ahead of schedule. The latest data suggests storage is now at nearly 95% in total.

Imported LNG has played a key role in getting Europe to this point.

But as LNG continues to be brought ashore, demand for facilities that heat the liquid and turn it back into gas remains high. There aren't very many such plants in Europe, partly because the continent has long relied on gas delivered via pipelines from Russia instead.

On top of this bottleneck, less gas is getting used up in Europe than it otherwise might at present because the weather has been very mild well into October.

Plus, as Antoine Halff, co-founder of Kayrros notes, industrial activities that rely on gas have relaxed. This is something he and his colleagues track by scouring satellite images of factories. "There's been a very dramatic reduction in cement and steel production in Europe," he says.

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Original Submission

• Re:Precationary advice Re:Precationary advice (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Friday October 28 2022, @10:54AM (1 child)

  by c0lo (156) on Friday October 28 2022, @10:54AM (#1278963) Journal

  Russia and weapons of mass destruction [wikipedia.org]

  Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world; the second-largest stockpile is the United States' 5,428 warheads. Russia's deployed missiles (those actually ready to be launched) number about 1,588, second to the United States' 1,644.

  Even only half of that on both sides is enough to wipe out the humanity in the nuclear winter to follow. [eurekalert.org] (note: the linked is pre-COVID).
  And I guarantee you that at least the ones on the nuke subs are functional.

  Putting numbers to the evaluation, Pearce and Denkenberger examined the threat potential of a 7,000-weapon arsenal, a 1,000-weapon arsenal and a 100-weapon arsenal. Playing out a hypothetical scenario, the researchers explain that if the U.S. used 100 nuclear weapons against China's most populous cities, initial blasts would likely kill more than 30 million people. This would kill a higher fraction of the population than even severe pandemics, providing plenty of deterrence to prevent another nation from attacking. Sunlight would decrease 10 to 20 percent and precipitation 19 percent (and in some places, even more).
  ...
  The agricultural loss from this so-called "nuclear autumn" would range from 10-20 percent, enough to cause widespread food shortages in wealthier nations and mass starvation in poorer nations.

  Starvation could result because nuclear weapons would cause cities to burn, putting smoke into the upper atmosphere and blocking sunlight for years. This could cause lower rainfall and lower temperatures, potentially causing winter-like weather in the summer, called "nuclear winter." Less severe reduction in sunlight is called "nuclear autumn," which could still cause many millions of people to starve.

  It is clear that even 100 nuclear weapons is more than enough to dramatically reshape the globe, and Pearce and Denkenberger argue it's also more than enough to deter other countries. Maintaining more than that number, the authors state, is not only against the best interest of a nation to protect its people, but also cost a significant amount to maintain.

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

  Parent

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• Re:Precationary advice (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday October 28 2022, @01:33PM

  by Opportunist (5545) on Friday October 28 2022, @01:33PM (#1278977)

  You'd still need enough dimwits to be stupid enough to actually execute an order like that.

  And remember, Russians have children, too. And they want to see them grow up.

  Parent