UK faces energy supply threat, government warns

19 March 2008 21:23  [Source: ICIS news]

TORONTO (ICIS news)--The UK is faced with a growing threat to its oil, gas and other energy supplies, Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned in a National Security Strategy report presented on Wednesday.

 

Global demand for energy is set to increase and, barring revolutionary developments in alternative energy, the competition for energy supplies will also increase, the report said.

 

On present projections, global energy demand would be more than 50% higher in 2030 than today.

 

At the same time supply of oil and gas was becoming increasingly concentrated, much of it in regions with potential for political instability, the report said.

 

“The premium attached to energy security, and the rising risk of energy shortages, will increase the potential for disputes and conflict,” it said.

 

Competition for energy was a global challenge in its own right, with potentially serious security implications.

 

“Along with climate change and water stress, it [energy supply] is one of the biggest potential drivers of the breakdown of the rules-based international system and the re-emergence of major inter-state conflict, as well as increasing regional tensions and instability,” the report said.

 

Countries such as China and Russia were already making control of energy supply a foreign policy priority, it added.

 

In terms of its energy strategies, the UK was working to diversify the sources of primary fuels and the routes by which they can be imported.

 

At the same time, the UK gas market was in the process of investing £10bn ($20bn) in a new gas import and storage infrastructure, the report said.

 

Other key threats examined by the report range from the acquisition of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons by terrorists to the impacts of climate change.

 

Strategies to address those threats include reforms to NATO, EU, and the UN, help for non-nuclear states to acquire the new sources of energy they need, and more bilateral and multilateral cooperation on terrorism.

 

“As the national security strategy makes clear, new threats demand new approaches. A radically updated and much more coordinated response is now required," said Brown in a statement to Parliament.

 

The full report is available on the UK government’s website.

 

(US$1 = £0.50)

ICIS Copyright © Reed Business Information 2009

Author: Stefan Baumgarten
+1 713 525 2653

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