HOW MUCH ENERGY DO DYING NATIONS REQUIRE?:

Gas bubble ‘will deflate UK prices by a third’ (Carl Mortished, 4/25/05, Times of London)

BRITAIN’S natural gas market will become oversupplied within two years, transforming a worrying winter shortage of fuel into a glut. The potential gas surplus emerges from a series of massive import schemes, including the world’s longest sub-sea gas pipeline, linking Norway with Britain.

Together these plans will create a gas bubble of more than two billion cubic feet per day by 2007 and send wholesale gas prices into decline for several years. Within two to three years the infrastructure building boom will have created additional gas import capacity roughly equal to Britain’s current annual demand, the Energy Contract Company’s report Gas Market Review 2005 says.

“It’s a massive fluctuation and it will depress gas prices,” Niall Trimble, director of the global consultancy, said. He expected wholesale gas prices to fall by about a third over the three winters after this year’s