Saturday, March 16, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Energy supply disruption as a future weapon of war
Read the latest instalment of Nick Drew's powerful and disturbing analysis on the Energy Page here.
Energy supply disruption as a future weapon of war
Read the latest instalment of Nick Drew's powerful and disturbing analysis on the Energy Page here.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Securing Energy Supply (3): Geo-political Threats in War and Peace
We have considered the interruptions to our energy supplies that can arise from the 21st century problem of intermittency of wind-produced electricity, and from the more traditional local threats of strikes, protests and other nations’ willingness to interfere with cross-border trade on protectionist grounds. But we remarked that, however disruptive these have been and can be in future, they are mere nuisances compared to the prospect of strategic geo-political actions taken with the deliberate aim of depriving us of the energy upon which our civilisation has come to depend.
At the most apocalyptic and obvious end of the spectrum is war.
By the time of WW1, oil had become essential to industry and naval warfare and, unlike the equally vital coal, was frequently obtained via lengthy supply chains with shipping often a vital link. Thus, blockading Britain’s supplies of imported oil, as much as food and metal ores, was a major strategic goal of German war policy and, as later in WW2, they came close to succeeding with their Atlantic naval actions against British shipping. As late as the end of 1943 - even with the USA having been in the war two years - the UK almost ran out of oil. Both nations put in huge efforts to build up oil supply networks, including innovative operational techniques such as the PLUTO system under the Channel to sustain invasion operations in Normandy.
For Germany itself in WW2, accessing oil resources became a primary early goal, and its thrusts into the oilfields of Romania, and then towards the Caucasus, were undertaken for this purpose. When the attempts to take Baku failed, it was forced to go to extreme lengths to develop synthetic fuels and lubricants. Both Speer and Eisenhower asserted that Germany lost the war primarily because by 1944 it was unable effectively to fuel its armour and airforce. On the opposing side Russia undertook extraordinary efforts to maintain constant supplies of oil to its fronts at Leningrad and Stalingrad, under the heroic engineer Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov, the Soviet Union's last living Commissar.
Control over energy supplies – or their destruction - was a central aspect in many other theatres of 20th century warfare, and would be again in future. Oil has been and remains at least one critical factor in Western military engagements in the Middle East; and China is acutely aware of its own dependence on imported energy. Self-sufficiency in oil is a long-standing American obsession.
There is a sense in which the vulnerability of energy supplies was not very interesting during the Cold War, when both sides were able to project vast destructive power at a distance. So what if the USA was well supplied with local oil ? These supplies were still vulnerable to Russian attack, and vice-versa, with large and totally static targets such as nuclear power plants and gas pipelines still more at risk. In such a scenario, ‘self-sufficiency’ is more of a logistical detail than a strategic guarantor of continuous energy supply.
But with the advent of ‘asymmetric warfare’ which is likely to characterise future conflicts, the whole question becomes altogether more interesting. If your major foes are unlikely to mount a direct physical assault on your domestic supply lines - either because they do not have the capability [Iran], or do not choose to conduct hostile operations in that manner [China], then keeping energy supplies local may very well offer significant advantages compared to the vulnerability of more extended, external lines of logistics which can be subject to a plethora of debilitating indirect actions and pin-prick attacks. An act of unattributable piracy here, a small distant pipeline rupture there ... much more secure if your supplies originate close to home, and travel short distances across friendly territory. We shall return to self-sufficiency in the next post in this series.
If war seems an extreme contingency for energy planning today (and you'll struggle to find much evidence of it being taken into account in current UK government energy thinking), then we surely cannot fail to give serious consideration to the great external political threats that have actually impacted on Western energy supplies in the past few decades. At the less critical end of the spectrum has been the collateral disruption inflicted on European customers for Russian gas whenever their disputes with the Ukraine spilled over into actual interruption of supplies. These short-lived but uncomfortable episodes have always happened in winter, and have seen serious short-term disruption for Eastern Europe and countries such as Italy, whose winter gas comes significantly or perhaps entirely from Russia, and whose strategic gas inventories are rapidly depleted.
While few imagine this is anything more sinister than a rather casual Russian attitude to the consequences for innocent bystanders, it has caused many nations to maintain higher gas inventories than would otherwise be necessary for operational reasons alone, and has been one of the reasons why countries like Poland are working hard to diversify their sources of gas (there are other reasons at work, too. At the same time it is fair to point out that Russia has made, and continues actively to make large investments on pipelines that outflank the Ukrainian problem, first to the North and then to the South: they have no desire to be known as a politically unreliable supplier.)
By far the biggest political assault on the West's energy supplies was of course the OAPEC oil embargo, the 40th anniversary of which will be upon us soon. Explicitly a hostile geo-political move, it was directed against selected Western countries - notably the USA and the Netherlands - in retaliation for the support given to Israel in the Yom Kippur war. This disruption over several months (long after actual fighting had ceased) was colossal: and the economic effects damaging and long-lasting. Of course, it also resulted in various large-scale initiatives at the global strategic level to prevent or counter such actions, which we shall consider in the next post.
So geo-political threats to security of energy supply falling short of outright war have been manifest in the past, including once on a truly strategic scale with immense consequences. If these things have happened before - particularly when the Big One was triggered by volatility in the Middle East, which is hardly ever off the radar - then prudent politicians and planners must contemplate the possibility they could happen again. And they do.
In part 4 we will consider the steps that can be taken to guard against threats to the security of our energy supply.
[ Continues ]
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
At the most apocalyptic and obvious end of the spectrum is war.
By the time of WW1, oil had become essential to industry and naval warfare and, unlike the equally vital coal, was frequently obtained via lengthy supply chains with shipping often a vital link. Thus, blockading Britain’s supplies of imported oil, as much as food and metal ores, was a major strategic goal of German war policy and, as later in WW2, they came close to succeeding with their Atlantic naval actions against British shipping. As late as the end of 1943 - even with the USA having been in the war two years - the UK almost ran out of oil. Both nations put in huge efforts to build up oil supply networks, including innovative operational techniques such as the PLUTO system under the Channel to sustain invasion operations in Normandy.
Control over energy supplies – or their destruction - was a central aspect in many other theatres of 20th century warfare, and would be again in future. Oil has been and remains at least one critical factor in Western military engagements in the Middle East; and China is acutely aware of its own dependence on imported energy. Self-sufficiency in oil is a long-standing American obsession.
There is a sense in which the vulnerability of energy supplies was not very interesting during the Cold War, when both sides were able to project vast destructive power at a distance. So what if the USA was well supplied with local oil ? These supplies were still vulnerable to Russian attack, and vice-versa, with large and totally static targets such as nuclear power plants and gas pipelines still more at risk. In such a scenario, ‘self-sufficiency’ is more of a logistical detail than a strategic guarantor of continuous energy supply.
But with the advent of ‘asymmetric warfare’ which is likely to characterise future conflicts, the whole question becomes altogether more interesting. If your major foes are unlikely to mount a direct physical assault on your domestic supply lines - either because they do not have the capability [Iran], or do not choose to conduct hostile operations in that manner [China], then keeping energy supplies local may very well offer significant advantages compared to the vulnerability of more extended, external lines of logistics which can be subject to a plethora of debilitating indirect actions and pin-prick attacks. An act of unattributable piracy here, a small distant pipeline rupture there ... much more secure if your supplies originate close to home, and travel short distances across friendly territory. We shall return to self-sufficiency in the next post in this series.
If war seems an extreme contingency for energy planning today (and you'll struggle to find much evidence of it being taken into account in current UK government energy thinking), then we surely cannot fail to give serious consideration to the great external political threats that have actually impacted on Western energy supplies in the past few decades. At the less critical end of the spectrum has been the collateral disruption inflicted on European customers for Russian gas whenever their disputes with the Ukraine spilled over into actual interruption of supplies. These short-lived but uncomfortable episodes have always happened in winter, and have seen serious short-term disruption for Eastern Europe and countries such as Italy, whose winter gas comes significantly or perhaps entirely from Russia, and whose strategic gas inventories are rapidly depleted.
While few imagine this is anything more sinister than a rather casual Russian attitude to the consequences for innocent bystanders, it has caused many nations to maintain higher gas inventories than would otherwise be necessary for operational reasons alone, and has been one of the reasons why countries like Poland are working hard to diversify their sources of gas (there are other reasons at work, too. At the same time it is fair to point out that Russia has made, and continues actively to make large investments on pipelines that outflank the Ukrainian problem, first to the North and then to the South: they have no desire to be known as a politically unreliable supplier.)
By far the biggest political assault on the West's energy supplies was of course the OAPEC oil embargo, the 40th anniversary of which will be upon us soon. Explicitly a hostile geo-political move, it was directed against selected Western countries - notably the USA and the Netherlands - in retaliation for the support given to Israel in the Yom Kippur war. This disruption over several months (long after actual fighting had ceased) was colossal: and the economic effects damaging and long-lasting. Of course, it also resulted in various large-scale initiatives at the global strategic level to prevent or counter such actions, which we shall consider in the next post.
So geo-political threats to security of energy supply falling short of outright war have been manifest in the past, including once on a truly strategic scale with immense consequences. If these things have happened before - particularly when the Big One was triggered by volatility in the Middle East, which is hardly ever off the radar - then prudent politicians and planners must contemplate the possibility they could happen again. And they do.
In part 4 we will consider the steps that can be taken to guard against threats to the security of our energy supply.
[ Continues ]
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
New stories on Broad Oak's pages
On World Voices: tension excalating in Fiji and Slogmaster John Ward in France; on the Energy Page, Nick Drew reports how EDF is dunning the British Government for huge subsidies and guaranteed profits - with the Daily Telegraph giving the French the oxygen of publicity.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
New stories on Broad Oak's pages
On World Voices: tension excalating in Fiji and Slogmaster John Ward in France; on the Energy Page, Nick Drew reports how EDF is dunning the British Government for huge subsidies and guaranteed profits - with the Daily Telegraph giving the French the oxygen of publicity.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Fiji: Bainimarama has a tiger by the tail
All in the same boat
Friday's Daily Mail article about the vicious mistreatment of escaped prisoners in Fiji is throwing sparks into the parched political underbrush. Although the story - based on a widely-viewed YouTube video uploaded on 4 March - appears to relate to events from last year, its publication comes at a very sensitive time, as the militaristic Bainimarama regime prepares to introduce a new Constitution. The mainstream coverage is now feeding back into local blogs like this one.
Washington-based consultants Qorvis have been working with the Fijian Government. In the face of this latest PR disaster they have yet to issue a public statement, but the day before the Mail piece came out Fiji Sun journalist Graham Davis was playing down the incident, placing it in the context of the long-standing culture of physical violence in Fiji and referencing similar police outrages in Australia, South Africa and the USA. Buried in the footnotes is the disclosure that he is a "regional adviser to Qorvis" (since when?)
Davis' spinning is a little too enthusiastic, perhaps, describing the September 2012 Naboro Prison breakout by five inmates as seeing "much of Suva terrorised" and opining that "many law abiding Fijians actually like being ruled with an iron fist if it means being able to sleep soundly in their beds at night". But thanks to past British interference, particularly in the matter of importing thousands of indentured labourers from India under terms that ensured most would settle permanently, Fiji is racially divided and prone to coup and counter-coup. In its way, it is the Northern Ireland of the South Pacific.
Accordingly, Australia is warning travellers in Suva to "exercise a high degree of caution"; New Zealand says "there is some risk to your security"; the USA advises "exercise caution" and "avoid demonstrations and large crowds, remembering that even peaceful demonstrations can turn violent unexpectedly."
The UK is more sanguine ("No restrictions in this travel advice") while counselling that "travellers should exercise caution and monitor the local situation for developments. Avoid all political rallies and avoid openly discussing political issues." Good old FCO; doubtless Our Man in Suva will be on hand with tea and crumpets for stranded Brits when the war-clubs get pulled out of the thatch. But the prize for innocence abroad goes to the Saturday Evening Post's travelogue "Fabulous Fiji", which keeps its goggly eyes focused on kava, coral and cannibalism (rendered cute by time).
Back in the real world, Qorvis declares on behalf of its client that "The Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, is currently in the process of drafting a new constitution, one that will enable the country's first-ever truly democratic elections: one person, one vote, one value." The "path to true democracy", as it calls this, has a road-block in the form of the regime's January decree on party political registration, designed (illegally in the opinion of international lawyers) to exclude much of the opposition including Mick Beddoes, leader of the United People's Party until the decree banned it (and the Fiji Labour Party is similarly threatened, according to the same link).
Another block to progress is the fact that the government scrapped a draft Constitution in the same month, after nearly a year of consultation. The proposed arrangement would have restricted the powers of the military. The regime has designed a version more to its own liking and Commodore Bainimarama says the new draft is now before him and will be submitted to the Constituent Assembly once the "bit of a problem with the registration of political parties" has been resolved.
The situation is decidedly ugly. Thousands of Indian descent have fled Fiji in the turmoil of recent years, and ethnic Fijians have more than doubled their numbers since 1966. The immediate postwar ethnic balance (about 46% each) has changed to 57% Fijian / 38% Indian. The perception of Bainimarama as heading a dwindling and partisan minority makes the task of reconciliation extremely challenging, especially when the incumbent President seems determined to use methods calculated to inflame his domestic opposition and defy foreign legal and media opinion.
Some current blogs and sites:
Most of the above are anti-government - please help us if you know of others that will serve as a counter-balance.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
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