28/03/2012 Newsnight Scotland

many a minister and their civil Tonight on Newsnight Scotland, the

latest on the North Sea gas leak. Is this a minor incident, as Total

hopes and believes? Or could it turn into something much more

serious? Also tonight, an experiment on Bute might pave the

way for a decent broadband services all over the Scottish countryside.

Good evening. There is still a cloud of poisonous and explosive

gas seeping out of the North Sea, and to the best of our knowledge,

there is still a flare of flaming gas just a few hundred metres away

from it. There is universal satisfaction that there is no

immediate threat to human lives, but it is still unclear exactly how

serious the leak at the Elgin platform will prove to be.

There are three issues here. What is happening with the gas leak, how

to spot it and what they have been telling us about what they are too.

Here they were on Monday. platform, all the power was

isolated so that there were no sources of ignition. That reduces

the chance of ignition. I can't promise it will not ignite, but we

have minimised the risk. But we learnt last night, as confirmed by

the oil company, that there is a flair still burning on the Elgin.

By saying we have switched off all normal sources of ignition, we are

saying we have switched off all sources of electricity in those

areas. The flair is designed to get rid of gas coming out of the

process under those conditions. It is a normal thing to operate at

that time. Which prompted the Scottish government to call for

full disclosure. Total are concentrating their efforts on

trying to fix the problem, but they have to put all the information

they have into the public domain and appeared to the principle of

openness and transparency. industry claims Total has been

concentrating on what really matters. It has conducted itself in

an exemplary fashion as far as safety is concerned. 230 people

were safely evacuated. This is the latest image released by Total of

the completely deserted Elgin. It is not obvious from the picture

that the flair is still a light, but we are assured it is. It is

also not obvious what happens next. Events in the North Sea oil fields

are also watched closely from the other side of the sea. A short

while ago, I spoke to the President of the Bellona Foundation, a

Norwegian based environmental organisation based in Oslo. I asked

for his assessment of the situation. If we are lucky, this is a pocket.

If it were to go empty, that would be the best scenario. If we were

down to one of these high temperature, high-pressure

reservoirs, for example if it started to leak and there was

pressure from one of these reservoirs, that is the road to

hell and then you are really in trouble. But we are not seen a

dramatic increase of the leak during the last 24 hours. But we

know it will be very complicated to work with any kind of operations to

stop this leak. On the Flat, if this should continue burning for a

several days, Total are saying at the moment they are not so worried

about it because the wind is blowing the cloud of gas a way. The

must be worried that the weather will eventually change. Is there

any way you can put out a flower without putting someone onto the

platform of? It is very complicated. When they abandoned the platform on

Monday morning, people had been fighting for 15 hours to get the

situation under control after people reported bubbling in the

water of. Their chances to do anything are limited. The CEOs of

Total have confirmed that it may be a long operation. The best chance

we have to avoid that is if the leak is coming from the pocket was

of wire -- reservoir, or part of the reservoir is empty. But there

is no information on that, and that worries me. You seem to be

suggesting that, should the pocket not empty itself within the next

few days, and should there be a necessity of digging a relief well,

that might only be possible by deliberately setting the gas on

fire so that vessels can move into the area? That is true. If this is

coming directly from a high pressure reservoir down there, for

example if they are connected to the Franklin West, that could last

for many years. The drilling platform they have ordered is

absolutely capable of drilling down to this depth. The question is, how

far do they have to stay away? Because if you have several days

with no wind and the gas leaks, or you have a build-up of pressure

under geological formations because of underground leaks that could

burst, you have to be quite far away. That is one of the big

choices Total will now face, how close they go. South to stay last

question. This particular platform was very high-tech when the wells

were drilled. Looking at some of the technical information that

Total have produced, it seems that they came across technical problems

later with these high pressure, high temperature Wells, that they

had not anticipated when they killed them. We saw the incident

two years ago. Are you worried that as we become more and more high

tech, because reserves are more and more difficult to get out, the

danger of serious incidence is increasing? This is very serious.

And again, to drill in such high temperature reservoirs is a risky

sport. I am not so sure that there are a lot off easy oil sources left.

We need political discussions over what kind of regulations we should

have in the European Union on this very complicated, high risk action.

As in the Deepwater Horizon, we see that gas leaks from offshore

platforms could be very complicated to drill relief wells. We have

criticised this in no way, places which have similar problems if a

gas leak occurs, to get close enough to drill tests at the risk

of an explosion. This is one of the things that has been underestimated

by the government and by the oil I am joined now by Inverness by the

energy consultant Tony Mackay who has been walking on North Sea oil

forecasts for Scottish Enterprise. The last point made by a Frederic

Hauge, that we are getting into areas of technology which we have

not really explored before. And that there has not been much debate

about whether this is desirable for. Well, we have had nearly 40 years

of production from the North Sea. Most of the fields and a declining.

The companies on exploring these more difficult fields, the high

pressure or high-temperature fields like Elgin. And more recently, the

deep-water fields to the west of Shetland. They are certainly moving

towards a more technologically difficult fields. But Elgin has

been producing for 10 years without problems so this is a very unusual

problem. It is true that it has been producing for a decade without

problems but it would appear that Total's own engineers run across

problems when it came to this business of what they call him-

filling Wellss -- infilling Wells. And there have clearly run into

problems when they tried to kill off these wells. Just as these

wells have run in production terms in terms of 10 years, does not mean

there's and no problems when you try to stop them. I agree but we

must accept that working in the North say is a risky business.

You're working in the sea and working with oil and gas which are

volatile hydro-carbons. But the problems we have had in the North

Sea over the past 20-30 years since Piper Alpha up on a relatively

small scale. More fishermen are killed in the North Sea every year

and people working in the oil and gas industries. I think the

industry's track record since Piper Alpha has been very good. I am an

economist, not an engineer but so far I think that Total have handled

this problem with Elgin very well. This business about decommissioning,

will that be one of the big things? Over the next few years? Yes, it is

a mature province in the North Sea. A lot of the fields are very near

the end of their productive life. The Brent oilfield for example I

think will finish very soon. That has been producing for 30 years and

will the big markets and opportunities over the next decades

will be removing the pipelines and platforms. Obviously not Elgin

unless there's a big disaster in the next few weeks. We must accept

that we have had a long history in the North Sea oil industry and it

is the only declining. That presumably is a business

opportunity as well. Yes, surprisingly the industry is going

through a boom period at the moment because of the higher oil prices.

If you're buying petrol or diesel you will understand that. But

because of the high prices, a lot of the fields that determined

things whether they were economically viable are now being

developed for the next few years we will have a high level of capital

expenditure. After that, say 2015 onwards, one of the biggest growth

markets unfortunately is going to be a removal of the platforms -

Brent and 40s and a lot of the oil field. The platforms will have to

be removed, the top signs removed, a lot of decontamination and it

will be a big market for the next decade. Tony Mackay, thank you 4-

joining us. The problems of bringing fast

internet to rural areas are of special interest in Scotland given

that outside the main centres of population they are in a lot of

wide open space. An experiment is under way on the Isle of Bute to

use old broadcast frequencies to deliver super-fast broadband. Our

reporter has been there to see it Good communications, whether the

traditional ferry or super-fast problem, I especially important for

island communities. Cut off the Paris service and the island is in

trouble. In the modern area, if the rural areas cannot show the

benefits of broadband, the impact is digital isolation. -- cannot

share the benefits. There's no question that this is beautiful but

also it is remote in a digital cent. More of us use devices like this to

communicate, share and connect with the world. And if you do not have

broadband it is hard to take part. At the southern end of Bute, a

quiet revolution is under way which is already transforming lives and

ultimately aims to do the same across more of rural Scotland. For

example, the local hotel almost became the pub with no beer because

of a local problem. With the internet we had before, it was a

nightmare. It was going to become very difficult to order a beer the

way our suppliers are pushing us to use online ordering. I don't like

ordering over the phone and the representatives are visiting less

so without broadband it would The experiment on Bute uses what is

called white space - gaps in the former broadcaster air waves which

are increasingly available due to the switchover to digital

television. It works like this. A dedicated transmitter on the

mainland beams a signal to an exchange building on Bute which

then provides broadband internet access to local residents. If it

can be shown to work reliably, it is a much cheaper option for a

rural community than using an This is a great technology for the

moment. Pushing out into the country. We are up against

boundaries and this takes us that little bit further. It gives us a

service to the people at the edge of the network and eventually the

new technologies will push things a bit further and they will be taken

over but at the moment as a stop gap, it certainly helps these

communities especially in rural areas. The transmitter at the local

exchange relays the high-speed connection to local residents who

need special equipment to get hooked up. It all seems to work.

And this is what it looks like if you send a clip recorded on your

iPad or iPhone or of the device into the system and then by e-mail,

you can get a video out of Bute and do it streaming as well. A couple

of miles away, online form-filling for animal passports and the

ability to do general research on stock is changing one lives on one

local farm. Looking back at the depth of pedigree and cattle, it is

a lot handier than doing it on paper. Has your life changed?

life has not changed, maybe my wife and cats just have a few more

options are doing things with them. You are still dealing with animals,

not faced like working like mad or tweeting? No, nothing like that at

all. This Skype call from the middle of nowhere worked fine but

his white space really the shape of things to come? That is the Isle of

And number of technologies are being used to fill in this gap that

will never get fibre networks. We have got this, white space,

satellites, people are talking about using 3G. In a sense, they

will all be intermediate technologies because you can see

the demand for proper fibre building. Once people get people a

bit better, they want to move on to the next stage. There will be

pressure. It might be intermediate This and this where both

revolutionary in their day and it is hard to think of life without

the postal service or telephones. Nowt the need for broadband is not

far behind but the economics remain a massive challenge. It is part of

working with the Government, they have got a strong strategy in

Scotland to deliver future broadband services so we must see

how we can fit this into the mix. Industry investment will be

important but it's at important So far, nobody has worked out had

to move an island. Even if they wanted to so even with their

regular every service, Bute will always be geographically remote but

the experiment here shows that technology can close the digital

divide and in that sense at least, Bute is not so far down the water.

Tomorrow's front pages - the Herald leads on the story of Cameron under

fire about buying petrol panic and the picture is of a queue at a

petrol station in Edinburgh. The Scotsman - the same story, petrol

sales soar by 45% as drivers panic with the same picture in Edinburgh.

UK Government accused of stoking fuel crisis as Union prepares for

talks. The Guardian leads on of a Council of Europe report on

Refugees, a dark day for Europe verdict on the refugee boat left to

die. That is all we have time for, we will be back tomorrow, and until

We are going to see some changes with our weather for the weekend

before Thursday, think more of the same. A chilly start and then

plenty of sunshine. More cloud across western Scotland and the

north -- west coast of Northern Ireland. Another sparkling day in

England. Temperatures reaching 21 degrees and further south, we could

see temperatures of 23 degrees. A bit more of a breeze across parts

of Cornwall. Coming in from the north or north-west means the coast

of Wales will be a bit cooler although the south coast could see

temperatures of 22 Celsius. Lots of sunshine here and across most of

Northern Ireland but a change on the northern coast. A cooler day

here. A cloudy day in the western coasts of Scotland. Through the

central belt and much of the north- east tippled again be fine on

Sunday. We will see increasing amounts of cloud as north-western

areas could be a great day. -- a dull day. Temperatures low on

Friday in the south but essentially another fine day with more spring

sunshine to be had. The area of cloud across the north-west

expanding into parts of northern and western Wales and generally a