From Robert Kisch.
HELIER Clement’s piece (JEP, 3 November) covered States spending on consultants with a tailpiece on oiI company profits.

Surely there is another perspective. As Jersey has increased its international recognition in the financial world, so has the population increased with its demands on services. The infrastructure has been barely able to cope.

The same applies to management of our international position, particularly regarding the delicate relationship with the European Union. As you know, this arises from our dependence on the UK, an EU member, for Jersey’s external affairs, which has led to pressure from the EU in enforcing its tax harmonisation policy.

Finance is Jersey’s main industry, recognised as top quality, and its advice is sought by major players in the financial world. Both kinds of infrastructure require world expertise which is simply not available in Jersey.

Individual residents may offer their advice, and some have valuable experience but have chosen to retire to Jersey rather than continue working and keeping up to date. Technologies and political law are both advancing at a rate demanding full-time hard work to keep up. This is why more consultants are needed from outside our tiny island than was the case before Helier retired to his shed.

Oil company profits must not be viewed in the isolation of peaks, any more than other industries. The following factors apply:
• Crude oil sourced outside the Middle East is increasingly difficult to find. Middle East countries with oil regard this as a powerful economic weapon. American policy, involving UK and others, has destabilised the area, raising the oil price with global economic consequences increasing the credit damage to the international banking system. The resulting slowdown affects the investments of the Middle East as well. While oil company profits benefit temporarily during such upheavals, these profits have to provide the investment in finding, extracting and refining new oil reserves. The net profit, after allowing for taxes, exploration funds and so on, is not as great as Helier envisaged.

• There is another factor. Long-term energy must come from nuclear power. This does not involve oil, which then becomes only viable for plastics and other oil-based products (for example paints and coatings).
The nuclear programme is being revived right now. Objectors link nuclear power to the atomic bomb and radiation dangers. The two are completely different. The bomb (any bomb) explodes, ie distributes the maximum energy in the minimum time. Civil nuclear plant controls this to a rate at which the energy, as heat, is turned to steam, driving turbine alternators producing electricity.

While the bomb products are totally lost, nuclear fuel rods are reprocessed, recovering 97% for re-use plus 1% new plutonium for use in the next generation of reactor. This is the ‘breeder’ reactor using fast neutrons, initially developed in Britain but at a time of post-war financial austerity (but that is another story).

The French took the project and it became the Phoenix prototype. This was so successful that the industrial scale Super-Phoenix prototype was trialled and passed with flying colours. Then politics stopped development. The French minister responsible for the environment at that time set out to close down all nuclear plant in five years. Happily, that did not happen, and electricity is France’s biggest export in terms of value.

The extended Flamanville plant is an example of nuclear plant expansion, with UK plants now being sited, Finland under contract, some 40 plants being awarded in China (the coal-fired plants being just a stopgap) and more. The oil companies, faced with this long-term future, are loath to invest huge amounts of capital in new refineries which will become obsolete before their calculated service life is expired. They will adapt their technologies to suit market demand, and this requires prudent reserves while money is available. So the recent profits, seen in this light, are not obscene.
Villa Martinique,
Chemin du Moulin,
St Ouen.