Brexit and Ireland by Tony Connelly

Author:Tony Connelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844884285
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

11. The Great Disruption

Natural gas rises from beneath the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic and is piped westwards through the Continental expanse. It also comes up from North Africa, hissing its way to compressor stations in the Netherlands and Belgium, from where it hurtles through subsea pipelines to Bacton in Norfolk. And it comes south from Norway, through a 1,166-kilometre pipeline to the Yorkshire coast.

But much of this gas has a further destination. The off-take from the British national grid happens in the Scottish town of Moffat, at a pressure of 50 bar. The gas is separated into two 36-inch-diameter pipelines and pushed for 30 kilometres (at the much higher pressure of 85 bar), until the pipelines converge and head south-east to Brighouse Bay on the Scottish coast. The gas is compressed one more time, to 140 bar, for its final 200-kilometre journey under the seabed to make landfall in Loughshinny, north County Dublin, and Gormanston in County Meath.

There are other ties of energy that bind Ireland to the UK. The 500-megawatt East–West Interconnector runs under the sea between Shotton in North Wales to Rush North Beach in County Dublin. A 400 kV overhead cable from Charlemont, County Armagh, to Kells, County Meath, has been in the pipeline (so to speak) since 2011.

The EU has been pushing for a more integrated energy market, where, in theory, cross-border energy flows open up competition, reduce prices and attract investment. There is closer cooperation between energy regulators, a common certification for transmission-system operators, and systems to approve interconnectors, manage congestion and transmission charges, and so on. The EU also encourages the pooling of energy as a way to withstand external shocks, such as Russia turning off the gas.

Since 2007, Northern Ireland and the Republic have operated the Single Electricity Market (SEM), a wholesale electricity-trading pool across the island. But Brexit could reverse decades of Irish–UK energy cooperation, and carve a border through the SEM.

Gas piped over from the UK is used to generate 46 per cent of the electricity supply on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland is heavily dependent on that electricity coming north from Loughshinny and Gormanston. The Republic’s indigenous gas supplies are not sufficient on their own. The Kinsale gas fields are nearly exhausted. Corrib Gas began flowing, from a deposit off the north-west coast of Ireland, on 31 December 2015, meeting 55 per cent of Ireland’s natural gas needs in 2016. But during the summer of that year, there were only three days when gas from the UK wasn’t needed. Corrib will probably provide 103 gigawatt hours per day at its peak (the Moffat-Ireland interconnector can deliver 265), but that will decline to 60 in two to three years.

Within five years there will be no gas storage in Ireland. According to Gas Networks Ireland, the Moffat interconnectors represent a robust guarantee of supply. However, under the EU Security of Gas Supply Regulation, member states are required to share resources at times of energy disruption. Since cooperation predates the regulation, Gas Networks Ireland believes the UK will continue to guarantee security of supply.

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