I would like to congratulate the Minister on bringing this order before the Seanad. It is a very brief order in one sense and yet in another I think it is one of very considerable significance. The use of gas for lighting purposes and as a fuel goes back quite a time; indeed, in this country we were to the forefront during the Victorian era in developing town gas. We have since gone through a period during which gas became — at any rate in this country — a very neglected fuel. Yet, it has enormous potential, enormous advantages, which I will come to in a moment.
An Bord Gáis have done a very good job indeed since they have been established, but it has been very much a domestic operation and limited particularly to the major cities and to the establishment of a gas pipeline from Cork and from the Kinsale Head gas field tapping into that. However, the potential for gas is really quite enormous. In our neighbouring island British Gas is probably one of the most successful of all companies in that country and certainly sees gas as having tremendous opportunity for development. To achieve that, both domestically and internationally, it is necessary that An Bord Gáis should have specific powers to set up subsidiaries and organise their business appropriately. Perhaps that was not thought about very much when it was set up in 1976 but it is certainly becoming very relevant now because there is virtually an international network of natural gas pipelines.
One of the main sources of natural gas for western Europe is certainly from the far east of Siberia and there are continuous gas lines from that. The gas fields of the North Sea are at least as important as the enormous oil fields in the North Sea and there are such huge gas fields as Echo Fisk. Here in the Irish Sea — on the United Kingdom side of it, unfortunately from our point of view — is the magnificent Morcambe Bay gas field. There is very little doubt that other gas fields are likely to be discovered. Indeed, within our own offshore hydrocarbon exploration the one successful discovery so far has indeed been the Kinsale field and there is some likelihood that there will be one or two other fields discovered and that any discoveries in the Celtic Sea area are perhaps as likely to be gas as oil.
The step which has been taken by the Government and the Minister of connecting up to the grid, which is now becoming a total European-Asiatic grid, is of enormous significance for us in that on the one hand it will guarantee supplies of fuel for us, but on the other hand, taking it in a very positive manner, it opens up to us a direct connection with the major gas consuming countries of western Europe. That is an expanding market. There is basically a shortage of energy. Although the price of oil is very low at the moment, nobody has really found any significant new accumulations of oil since the 1970s oil crisis. Yet, there is a steadily increasing demand for energy and that increasing demand can basically be only met from three sources.
One is the use of coal, which is very inefficient and of course environmentally very damaging. Here in Dublin we are getting away from the use of coal. One is by having nuclear power stations and there is a dilemma there indeed. Many environmentalists react immediately and almost automatically against nuclear power stations. Yet, others could argue that, if we wish to protect the environment and avoid too much use of fossil fuels, one of the effective ways of doing so is to extend the number of nuclear power stations.
The one alternative which is very effective is the use of natural gas. We already have one major field — we may perhaps in due course have others — and it should be available for export. In environmental terms it is a very satisfactory substance to use and I will quote some relevant figures. As regards the greenhouse effect, the main cause of it is believed to be the production of nitrogen oxides and this comes mainly from coal and so on. If you use natural gas the proportion of nitrogen oxides is much less. If we compare it with other fossil fuels or other fuels in general, we may say that natural gas is 60 per cent as compared with that caused by coal, or 75 per cent as compared with that caused by oil. It is an enormous saving and could be very important from an environmental point of view. It is a very clean and efficient fuel. We have argued for some time in this country about the use of gas for the production of electricity. It may be of some interest that British Gas in its latest annual report is talking about using gas increasingly for the production of electricity.
Another area, and the establishment of subsidiary companies could be very important here, is to enable An Bord Gáis to follow the path which the ESB and other Irish companies have followed successfully overseas. There is no real reason, with the expertise which we are now building up with An Bord Gáis and the use of natural gas in this country, why that technology and the personnel associated with it should not make a contribution overseas. It is one of the main areas of development of British Gas. In fact, it has divided itself into three major areas of business activity. One is domestic gas in the UK, one is gas exploration and development. Unfortunately, in this country our gas company or others are not involved at all — yet, at any rate — in exploration and development, although under the 1976 Act An Bord Gáis is entitled to be.
The third area of business management for British Gas is what it calls global gas. Effectively, that is exporting expertise by British Gas to companies overseas, to cities overseas that want to bring in gas plants, to industrial companies that wish to use natural gas. I think there could be a major area of opportunity and development here for Irish experts in the gas industry to contribute their technology, teaching and help to many of the countries overseas where gas, and certainly natural gas, is only beginning to be used as a source of energy. It is certainly a source of energy that will be used increasingly in the future and I think the Minister is very much to be congratulated on the brief but crucial order which he has brought before the Seanad today.