Hi,

         I am sure that many of you have heard by now that drilling for oil has now commenced off the Falkland Islands. To those who are interested in saving the planet this is bad news. The good news for the Falkland Islanders is that three giant wind turbines were just started up last weekend which should provide 40% of their power needs.

Forgive me if I am cynical however as this seems to me hypocritical. On the one hand the Government is  developing green energy and at the same time contributing to increased polution by allowing drilling for what they hope will be 60 billion barrels of oil.

I suspect the real answer is that they know they can charge high levels of tax revenue on oil products, whereas it might be harder to charge such high revenue on natural sources of energy. It is nonetheless disappointing that Governments do not really seem to be sincere about reducing polution, but simple make a token gesture in developing some green energy.

At least some power companies are going in the right direction as it has just been announced that two UK power companiers have just won the second stage of a £1 billion competition to build the world’s first large-scale “clean” coal power station. What a pity the oil companies do not seem to be trying to develop cleaner oil products.

claeaner