Southern Water considering shipping supplies from Norway to UK due to drought fears
One of the UK’s largest water companies is considering shipping supplies from Norway to the UK.
Southern Water said the idea was a “last-resort contingency measure” in case of extreme droughts in the early 2030s.
Up to 45 million litres could be brought to the UK per day under the proposals.
The Financial Times, which first reported the potential move, said the water, from melting glaciers by fjords in the Scandinavian country, would be transported by tankers.
It comes as fears grow over the future of water services in the UK following droughts in the summer of 2022 when some areas of the country came close to running out of supplies.
The Financial Times said Southern Water was in “early-stage” talks with Extreme Drought Resilience Service, a private UK company that supplies water by sea tanker.
The firm would pay for the measure out of customers’ bills, according to the report.
Southern Water, which covers Hampshire, Kent, East and West Sussex, and the Isle of Wight, currently gets its supplies from groundwater and rare chalk streams.
However, the Environment Agency (EA) has urged the firm to reduce its reliance on such sources amid concerns over the environmental impact and fears they could make the risk of droughts worse.
‘Costly and carbon-intensive’
Water firms have come under growing criticism in recent years over sewage spills and rising bills, with households facing an average increase of 21% over the next five years.
Companies have also been urged to improve their infrastructure to help supplies. Currently around a fifth of water running through pipes is lost to leaks, according to regulator Ofwat.
And a report by the EA earlier this year found that Southern Water, along with Anglian Water, Thames Water and Yorkshire Water, was responsible for more than 90% of serious pollution incidents.
Following criticism over sewage discharges, Southern Water’s chief executive Lawrence Gosden blamed “too much rain” in 2023 for the problem during an interview with ITV News.
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The company said it was facing a shortfall of 166 million litres per day in Hampshire alone during future droughts.
But the firm said it was already undertaking other measures to address the problem, including by building the UK’s first new reservoir in more than three decades in Havant Thicket.
However, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr criticised the Norway proposal and said the firm should focus more on addressing issues domestically.
“Tankering in huge quantities of water from Norway will inevitably be a costly and carbon-intensive alternative to that of doing a better job with the water resources that are available in a rainy country like the UK,” he said.
He added: “Despite the obvious failings of planning, water companies need to start thinking of potable fresh water as a precious and finite resource, and plan to start treating it as such.”
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From 2022: How can we protect ourselves from water crisis?
Tim McMahon, Southern Water’s managing director for water, said: “We put less water into supply now than we did 30 years ago and measures like reducing leakage have enabled us to keep pace so far with population growth and climate change.
“As we work to take less water from our chalk streams and build new reservoirs like Havant Thicket in Hampshire, we need a range of options to help protect the environment while this infrastructure comes online.”
Mr McMahon added: “Importing water would be a last resort contingency measure that would only be used for a short period in the event of an extreme drought emergency in the early 2030s – something considerably worse than the drought of 1976.
“We’re committed to continuing to work with our regulators on developing the right solutions to meet the challenge of water scarcity, while protecting the environment.”
Boeing and union negotiators will meet later in a fresh bid to end strikes by workers that have hammered plane production, exacerbating the fallout from the company’s safety crisis.
The company, which is bidding to revive its fortunes under a new chief executive, has more than 32,000 staff refusing to work.
They walked out of factories in the Seattle area and in Oregon, which make aircraft including its 737 MAX models, on 13 September in protest at new contracts.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) is demanding the workers get a 40% pay rise.
It is also seeking the restoration of a defined benefit pension plan.
Boeing made this week, what it said was, a “best and final offer” of a 30% pay rise over four years and a performance-related bonus.
The union has refused to put the offer to a vote, declaring it falls short of what its members find acceptable.
Two previous days of negotiations ended without agreement.
Boeing 737 Max aircraft are parked behind a picket line in Washington. Pic: AP
Boeing placed tens of thousands of other workers on furlough as the strike began.
Production of its best-selling planes, the 737 MAX models, had already been hurt by curbs imposed by regulators in the wake of the mid-air Alaska Airlines scare in January that saw a panel blow out, forcing the 737 MAX 9 plane into an emergency landing.
Investigators examine the panel which failed during a flight on a Boeing MAX 9 jet in January
The incident prompted renewed safety scrutiny of Boeing after the scandal that followed the fatal crashes of MAX 8 planes in 2018 and 2019, blamed on faulty flight control software.
The production limits imposed on Boeing this year have further harmed deliveries to customers globally, including Ryanair.
Europe’s largest carrier by passengers, which has blamed Boeing’s delays for cuts to its expansion plans this year, made clear it feared extended delays to deliveries of new planes this week when asked about the impact of the strikes.
“The union is ready for this opportunity to bring forward the issues that members have identified as critical to reaching an agreement,” IAM said in a statement.
“We know that the only way to resolve this strike is through negotiations.”
Boeing, which has seen its shares fall 40% in the year to date, did not comment ahead of the talks.
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Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said of the dispute this week: “Boeing remains deep in a wage row, which is spelling fresh production trouble ahead.
“Shareholders who hoped that the arrival of a new CEO Kelly Ortberg in August would help the company make a fast exit from its difficulties are sorely disappointed. The deep-seated nature of the challenges the company is facing has come even starker, given the rejection of 30% pay offer to staff.
“Relations between management, union leadership and staff appear to have broken down further, given complaints by workers that they weren’t given time to vote on the latest proposal.”
For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine two and a half years ago, the UK has begun to sanction tankers carrying Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and around the world.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has announced it is using new powers to sanction five LNG tankers and two companies involved in the LNG sector.
The sanctions cover ships which were, until relatively recently, insured by British companies, though those insurers cut their ties when those vessels were sanctioned by the US.
Sky News understands that the FCDO is also closely examining whether it should sanction other LNG tankers carrying Russian LNG.
This follows a report from Sky News earlier this year, which revealed that a company whose LNG operations headquarters are located in Glasgow, Seapeak, part owns and operates a number of tankers carrying Russian gas from Siberia to Europe. The report also found that numerous LNG tankers are still insured by British companies.
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The upshot is that British companies are still helping facilitate these exports from Russia.
The flow of LNG out of Russia represents a key source of Russian income, both for domestic businesses and, even more so, for government revenues. While many other streams of natural resources exports are declining, the Kremlin is hoping to increase its share of global LNG market share from 8% to 20%.
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However, sanctioning these vessels is a thorny business, since they are still providing large quantities of gas to Europe, which has so far stopped short of sanctioning Russian gas.
But since the UK is a critical player in this shipping sector, it both benefits from the trade, and has an outsize influence in clamping down on it.
The FCDO is understood to be preparing to use its new powers, which allow it to sanction individual vessels, again in the coming months.
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