FRENCH NATURAL GAS FOR FRANCE!

French should use French gas rather than expensive American gas

            France is facing an acute shortage of natural gas next year. This is likely to lead to blackouts and a cold population. I live in Paris, so this situation is of more than casual interest to me and my neighbors.

            Yet the gas shortage was not forced on France by the circumstances of the war in Ukraine. It’s a consequence of policy choices, in particular the 2017 French law banning any new oil and gas exploration, as well as banning the use of “fracking” techniques for enhancing hydrocarbon production.

            When Russia stopped gas pipeline flows to France and other European countries this summer, the Europeans turned to Norway to increase its pipelined gas exports. They also turned to Liquified Natural Gas exporters, such as Qatar and the US. To bid away enough gas from other importing regions to fill European gas storage, Europe paid way over the previous LNG price levels.

            These prices were even higher than they might have been if Europe had not been insistent on short term LNG import contracts. Longer term contracts could have been negotiated at a discount, but those would have apparently not complied with the EU’s “Fit for 55” carbon emissions goals.

            These goals incorporate progressively more aggressive reductions in fossil fuel use over the next eight years. The “climate goal” has become a law requiring  cuts of EU carbon emissions by at least 55%(!) by 2050. Compliance with the law would, necessarily, require a much higher level of imported metals such as copper and nickel.

            I write “apparently” because EU countries also rapidly increased their coal burning, which is far more carbon intensive than gas, or even oil. The Fit for 55 targets have become even less credible over the past 11 months.