Why the media silence on devastating consequences of gas supply shutdown?

Published on Monday 28 April 2008 21:42

Little has been said about the consequences of the cessation of a third of the UK's gas supply caused by the Grangemouth refinery shutdown (your report, 26 April). These include additional costs to industry and commerce as users on interruptible supply contracts have to turn to more expensive fuels. If, after these customers are turned off, there is still a shortfall in supply, other large users, including gas-fired power stations, may have to have their supplies restricted, again a

Were it found necessary to cut supplies to an urban area, the consequences could be severe, for service engineers would have to visit all customers in the area to ensure that when supplies were again available, the dangers arising from unrestricted gas flows were avoided. Gas mains might have to be purged with nitrogen before supplies could be restored.

There is widespread ignorance of the hazards of cutting off gas supplies as the silence on this topic in the media testifies.

As panic spreads through the corridors of power, the consequences of delay in ensuring the independence and autonomy of the UK's energy supplies are beginning to be felt. It is scandalous that the country should be so vulnerable at the present time that a few strikers at a refinery could bring the country to its knees.

Even more outrageous will be the situation when the energy gap widens, when indigenous oil and gas supplies dwindle, when old coal and nuclear power stations reach the end of their lives and the country will become ever more dependent on imports from politically unstable areas of the world.

(PROF) FENTON F ROBB

North Street

Eyemouth, Berwickshire

The Grangemouth oil refinery management is too soft. The proposed changes to pensions apparently affect not one worker and it is reported that oil refinery staff earn 40,000 a year.

This 48-hour strike has paralysed the refinery and lost the company, North Sea oil companies, the government and taxpayers billions.

OK, the company and the country have suffered. Let us tighten our belts and suffer some more. Let this one pass, but if the workers threaten another such paralysing and costly strike and carry out their threat, the management should lock them out or sack them.

It is perfectly reasonable for a company in the present economic climate and in the wake of government interference with pension tax allowances to ask well-paid and well-pensioned workers to pay their share. If prospective employees do not like the new pension arrangements, they need only turn the job offer down.

Better that than return to the bad old days of union dominance, strike-ridden years and economic decline.

GEORGE K McMILLAN

Mount Tabor Avenue

Perth

Jim Walker's promotion of biofuels is, like wind farms, a dangerous distraction from durable, clean solutions to future energy sources (Platform, 26 April).

The only transport system for a predicted world population of nine billions will not be mechanised; resources will only permit a short-range economic model based on largely regional materials.

Wasting land on biofuels for the privileged only continues our reliance on the internal combustion engine and oil, instead of redesigning society around walking or cycling, which are the methods used by most of humanity.

JOHN ROGERSON

Livingstone Place

Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire