Monday, July 31, 2006

What would €3 billion a Year Extra do for Ireland?

Martin Cronin of ForFas has published some very interesting figures on the Internet regarding Ireland's dependency on oil.

It seems that in 2004 we imported 9,000,000 tonnes of oil much of it used by ESB for electricity. That figure has probably increased to well over 10 million tonnes by now.

Now please forgive my bone headed attempts at maths in this attempted guess of a figure for the amount of money we send out of Ireland every year for oil.

There are roughly 8 barrels per tonne of oil.
10,000,000 tonnes x 8 barrels per tonne = 80,000,000 barrels of oil.
Todays price for oil is approximately $74 per barrel and rising!!
80,000,000 x $74 = $5,920,000,000 worth of oil.
$5,920,000,000 dollars = €4,640,000,000 Euro per year.

Ireland Gets €3 billion a year Bonus?

We could save up to 65% of our yearly oil bill of €4.64 billion if we got the finger out and rushed in Biomass for heating, electriciity and ethanol, and lots more wind farms for electricity.

What would over €3 Billion every year extra cash Euros floating around in Ireland do for the economy? Plus we would have many thousands of extra sustainable jobs created as an extra bonus.

I stand to be corrected on my figures - but I think I am no too daft in my guess!

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