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Gas Distribution Networks UK

It’s a gas, gas, gas.

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After the furore over the future of the Longannet power station, where the coal-fired generator has to pay £40 million per annum just to connect to the grid, I decided to do a bit more digging into the energy sector of the UK. What I found doesn’t surprise me but it does sadden me. For here we are living in a land rich in natural resources. We have an abundance of energy sources yet we pay the highest prices for our energy in the whole UK. Which is bizarre when you consider that we produce so much of the stuff.

I happened upon a report from Consumer Focus which caught my eye. It is entitled, “Off-gas consumers” and it details the numbers of people who are connected to the mains gas grid in the UK. But before we get into the report it is worth reminding ourselves where the UK’s natural gas comes from, for this we can get the information from the DECC in their DUKES report.

UK gas network

UK gas network

Reading through the DUKES report we can see that the UK is no longer self-sufficient in natural gas, we produce around 50% of what we consume. The rest is imported and the bulk of that comes through the Langeled interconnection from Norway. But if we look at the home produced stuff we can see that the vast majority of it comes from the North Sea. There is an area off East Anglia which produces a lot of gas and very little oil but all of the rest comes from Scottish waters and it is landed at St. Fergus gas terminal near the Broch. Just up the road from me. From there the gas enters the UK’s gas transmission system and travels through 4 pipelines which transport the gas south, all the way south. All of those pipelines pass close to my house, one of them is less than 400m away, yet I have no mains gas.

Which brings us back to the Consumer Focus report, here is a nice wee table which illustrates the costs of different heating fuels:

Fuel costs for heating

Fuel costs for heating

Although the table states 2009 prices it was updated in 2013, but since the fall in the price of oil we can assume that the figures are no longer valid. However the point of the table is to illustrate the costs of each fuel for heating our homes. As we can see, mains gas is the cheapest and electric heating can be almost three times more expensive. Here in Gordon I use heating oil and logs. Cheapish but not as cheap as mains gas.

But I’m not alone in the lack of mains gas, there are others.

Mains gas connections UK

Mains gas connections UK

We can see that in England 92.8% of households have access to mains gas. But the picture here in Scotland is not so rosy, up here we only have 86.4% of our households with access to mains gas. Of those without mains gas access 15.2% of the households use the most expensive fuel type, electricity. As the Consumer Focus report describes, a lack of access to mains gas creates fuel poverty. So how can it be that we produce so much natural gas yet we have so small a distribution network?

Part of the answer is that we have a larger rural population scattered over a larger area than England, but that’s not all of the answer. Methlick is a village not far from me and it has a population of 442 at the last census, yet it has no mains gas. There are countless other small villages dotted about the countryside which are also deficient of a mains gas supply. So who or what is responsible?

Gas Distribution Networks UK

Gas Distribution Networks UK

The distribution of mains gas in Scotland is controlled by a single company which is now called SGN, some might call that a monopoly. SGN is owned by three shareholders: Borealis Infrastructure Europe (UK) Ltd (25%), Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board (25%) and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Ltd (50%). SGN also distribute gas in southern England. SSE has some directors on SGN’s board. SSE also produce electricity, and as we have seen we have the most expensive electricity in the country.

If you have dual fuel, that is both gas and electricity, you can save money by purchasing both from the same supplier. Lets take a look at what a customer in Inverness would pay Eon for dual fuel at the standard rate:

Dual fuel Inverness Eon

Dual fuel Inverness Eon

Now lets take a look at what a customer in Ilford would pay for the same package:

Dual fuel Ilford Eon

Dual fuel Ilford Eon

We can see from the above that the electricity is more expensive in Scotland but the gas price is exactly the same. We discussed the extra cost that Scotland pays for electricity in this post. The normal reason given is that we are so remote from the generators that the transmission costs are higher, also our generators pay more to connect to the national grid because they are remote from the main population centres (hence the £40 million connection charge for Longannet).

By the same logic surely we should see the same thing for gas: the further away from the supply you are the more you would pay since there are losses in the gas network also? However this is not the case. A customer in London can buy gas from the Scottish sector of the North Sea for the same price that a customer who lives right next door to where that gas comes ashore pays. What kind of twisted logic is this? Is this a case of Scotland subsidising the rest of UK again?

But that is not all, lets take a look at where some of this gas ends up; power stations. The most efficient, and cleanest, form of power generation from fossil fuels is currently the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station. With such an abundance of gas you expect that Scotland would have a few of these? Eh no, we have one at Peterhead and the old Cockenzie coal-fired station is due for conversion at some point.

So if we don’t have them who does? Well if we have a look at this list from Wikipedia we can see that England has 45 of them, all of them being built since 1991. Coincidentally this is just after the privatisation of British Gas in 1986. Perhaps that explains why there are no extra transmission costs for gas? Or am I just being overly cynical?

Longannet is back in the news today with the announcement that it may have to close next year due to the high connection charges. The UK government, who have energy as a reserved matter, say that they will look at the pricing structure for electricity transmission in 2016. They also say that Scotland’s energy supply is assured due to the pooling and sharing of resources and all those lovely CCGT power stations daan saarf will keep the lights on.

The problem is that we will have to pay more for this electricity, which is produced from Scottish gas in England, to be sent from England back to Scotland, due to transmissionlosses. Logical it is not.

Is this a case of the UK government deliberately running the Scottish industries and infrastructure down in order for us to be more dependant upon rUK and therefore less likely to become independent? Therein lies the question.

COSCA Cow Milked by Clan Chiefs

Milking the COSCA cow

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COSCA, or the Council of Scottish Clans & Associations, are an American organisation who aim to put people in touch with their ancestry. They also wish to keep the clan system, as they see it, alive. They cannot understand that we that are left here in Scotland, the “also rans” as Alastair McIntyre arrogantly states in his comment, don’t bother with our clans. The clan system to which they subscribe is one of their own, and Walter Scott’s, making. It is still fundamentally feudal in nature however, with its inherited chieftainship. It is this aspect of the clan system which we find abhorrent. Why should anybody be placed in a position of power and privilege just because of who their parents were?

The clan chiefs have their own website and club, called the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs or the Scottish Feudal Council as we like to call them. It is this organisation which wishes to perpetuate the feudalism of the past. Have a look at the list of chiefs, it reads like a who’s who of the Scottish landed gentry. Of the 120 persons listed fully half are titled. People such as the Countess of Sutherland and the Earl of Caithness, whose ancestors were among the worst of the clan chiefs who cleared the lands of their people. Their own kin! It is these actions which make the highlands of Scotland look as they do today, empty. Full of ruins, testament to the chiefs’ savagery of the past.

These chiefs are the same people who are currently squealing about the upcoming Land Reform bill. COSCA have also noticed this bill, if they wish to know more about the issues surrounding land reform they could pop over to Andy Wightman’s site or read his book, The Poor Had No Lawyers. It is an issue which we feel strongly about too and there will be posts about this subject soon. Don’t forget that the land which these chiefs own once belonged to the people of the clan, you may wish to ask your landed clan chief how they came to be in possession of it.

Highland Clearances

A riposte to the Scottish Feudal Council

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At the tail end of last year I published a piece about the meeting of the Scottish Feudal Council which had taken place in Holyrood Palace. The advertised purpose of this event was for the heirs of the clan chiefs to network. The event was hosted by an organisation called COSCA, which stands for Council of Scottish Clans and Associations Inc. The mission of this organisation is to put US citizens in touch with their clan organisations and preserve their Scottish heritage. So far so noble.

Now I called the organisation the Scottish Feudal Council for a reason; the “heritage” which this organisation wishes to preserve is one of a fundamentally feudal nature. It is the relationship between clan chief and clan. They view this relationship through tartan tinted glasses as one which is benign, however the history is somewhat different, so let’s take a look at this “heritage” with a more critical eye.

Scotland has a feudal past, in fact feudalism was only abolished on 28th November 2004 when the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. Act 2000 was brought into force. So what is feudalism? For this we need to look back in time and I am grateful to Andy Wightman for the work he has done in this area which is presented in his book, The Poor Had No Lawyers.

Prior to the reign of the Scottish king, David I, Scottish society consisted of loose family groups who occupied lands which had been won through fighting and marriage. These family groups were headed by a male of the family. The land that they occupied belonged to the family group as a whole but the head of the family determined who would work which bit and the land was shared reasonably fairly. We could call the family group a clan. When the Norman king David I came to the throne he brought with him an idea of feudalism from England. This system would enable him to control the people and to raise money from them, he proceeded to implement this system across the kingdom. In order to aid him he imported Norman knights from France.

The feudal system was a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. A more comprehensive definition is available on Wikipedia. The land still belonged to the clan and the chief still directed who did what, but now the chief owed the king money or men. The people owed the chief their loyalty and the chief was loyal to the clans folk in return. The folk paid the chief what they could; produce, livestock or money. In return the chief was expected to help the folk during hard times. Some of the chiefs acquired more land through fighting with rivals and service to the king. Soon they became wealthy. Soon they adopted fancy titles like Earl and Baron, sometimes even Duke.

The chiefs began to realise that they needed more money to sustain their fancy lifestyles than their poor tenants could afford to pay. There was also still that responsibility to those tenants when times were hard. So the folk of the land, who were kin of the chief, had their rents raised so hight that they couldn’t pay them. Some of the folk had their their leases terminated. The people were driven from the land, their land, to fend for themselves or pushed into unproductive plots beside the sea (known as crofts). Some of the chiefs, MacLeod of MacLeod for instance, sold the folk into slavery in the new world.

Why did they do this? Because they wanted to cover the land with sheep. Sheep made more profit than folk you see. The folk could not believe what their own kin had done to them. Some folk were evicted in the most violent manner, people died. But mostly they had their homes and belongings torched and were left to fend for themselves.

Where did these people go? Some of them made their way to the cities to try to find work. Most boarded ships to colonies, mostly Canada and America. The conditions on the ships were atrocious, many people died. Slave ships were limited in how many unfortunate passengers they could carry. The Scottish passengers were fare paying so they could be packed in even tighter than a slave ship. Many ships sank (34 in one year). These people we now know as the Scottish Diaspora.

Highland Clearances

Highland Clearances

What of the clan chiefs, the Dukes, Earls and Barons? Well they held onto the land, making money from sheep. Mostly they lived elsewhere, Edinburgh and London were favourites. They devised new laws so that they could pass their whole land holdings to their eldest son – the law of prigomenture. They passed laws so that the land could not be taken off them if they became bankrupt and to protect their holdings. The results of these acts is that Scotland has the most unequal land ownership patterns in the world today. More than 50% of this country is owned by just 432 individuals. A full 10% of Scotland is owned by just 16 individuals.

So who are these people who own all this land? We don’t know who all of them are but some of them we do. The Duke of Buccleuch holds 268000 acres, he is also the hereditary chief of clan Scott. The Duke of Atholl holds 130000 acres, he is also the hereditary chief of clan Murray. The Countess of Sutherland holds 150000 acres, she is also (unusually for a woman) the hereditary chief of clan Sutherland. The lands of Sutherland were also the place where the worst of the excesses of the highland clearances were committed.

So you can see that the “heritage” to which the Scottish Feudal Council wishes to hold on to is bloody and corrupt, it as a “heritage” of betrayal by the clan chiefs. The very same people to whom this club seems to fawn over. Their ancestors betrayed your ancestors and forced them from their land. Forced them to make the dangerous trip across oceans to carve out new lives. These people don’t deserve your loyalty, you should despise them and all that they stand for.