Sakhalin oil workers swept away

Only a few weeks ago, on 18^th December last year, the Kolskaya oil rig capsized in a fierce storm, in temperatures of -17C , some 200 kilometres off Sakhalin island. The oil rig was being towed, by an icebreaker and a two boat, back to the island, which is to the east of Russia in the Sea of Okhotsk, after completing a drilling mission. Rescue efforts were hampered by the strong winds and waves up to 4 metres high, and the search was called off as night fell. Fourteen people were rescued alive, at least four people died, and there were fears for 63 other people in board, as the rig might have overturned before they were able to escape on to life rafts. 

The Sakhalin accident happened as the rig was being towed from the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to Sakhalin by an icebreaker and a tug. The transportation ministry stated that the platform started sinking after it was hit by a strong wave, which broke some equipment and portholes in the crew's dining room. The lifeboats were washed away by a 5 metre wave.

Map of Sakhalin


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When in first happened, the accident was reported by the BBC. Briefly, it was mentioned on the news bulletins every hour. But after the sinking of the oil rig, with lives in the balance, and an inevitably higher death toll with people missing in the harsh seas with little chance of rescue, there was no more news. Russia Today reported that the day after the accident, 19^th December, rescuers found the four lifeboats, but they were all empty. Built in 1985, the Kolskaya rig was one of the largest oil rigs used in Russia, 70 metres long and 80 metres wide. The storm, with winds of 70 kilometers per hour waves up to six metres high, had damaged two of the air tanks, which gave buoyancy to the platform, causing the rig to tip over. A news station in Murmansk reported that the crew's captain and safety officer had tried to persuade their superiors to postpone the operation to avoid the powerful storm, but to no avail.

There is a sharp contrast between the sparse media coverage of this accident at sea and the giant Costa Concordia cruise ship which hit rocks off the Italy, with 4,000 people on board. At the time of writing the number of people known to have died is 17 and there is no hope of finding the 15 people who remain unaccounted for alive. Not so many people were affected by the Sakhalin accident, but there was a prolonged, agonising search, and a higher death toll. But Sakhalin is in a remote location which the global media rarely report on. More scrutiny by the world’s mainstream media would help improve the safety of offshore drilling.

By 22nd December, six more bodies were recovered from the Sea of Okhotsk, the known death toll had risen to 17, and 36 people were still missing. The oil rig had sunk in just 20 minutes. Investigation of the accident was underway, and a breach of safety regulations was suspected. On that day, the active search was called off  because of a cyclone in the area, and because all hope of finding further survivors had been lost. So the total death toll at Sakhalin was 53 people. There were more fatalities than the May 2010 explosion of the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers.

The BBC did not give any background information about the immensity and strategic importance of the Sakhalin oil project. This might be partially due to the extraordinary remote geography. The island is to the north of Japan, seven time zones and a nine hour flight from Moscow. Temperatures can plummet as low as -40°C. On the other hand, the BBC, and many TV channels, are currently obsessed with everything ‘extreme’ - ice road truckers and pilots, celebrities and wannabee celebs surviving in the jungle with nothign but insects and a camera crew to sustain them, Arctic communities, wildlife in polar regions and deep under the oceans. We get programmes about the wonder of the environment, and the risks from the damaging of fossil fuel driven industrial activity in particular climate change. There was even an episode of the series Frozen Planet, presented by David Attenborough, about the climate change threat to the wildlife and indigenous communities in frozen polar regions, (though the series is to be aired in the US, by Discovery and other channels without this episode). But we see little of the infrastructure which causes the environmental damage.

So here’s some background on the Sakhalin oil project, one of the biggest and most technically challenging in the world. It’s part of this era of extreme oil, the endgame of the oil age as we struggle to extract more inaccessible deposits. More technology and more energy is used to over-ride the constraints of difficult terrain to extract the depleting supplies of oil which remain - ever deeper under the oceans, encroaching further into Arctic and Antarctic regions, and low grade supplies such as tar sands and shale gas.

 

The Sakhalin oilfields were discovered in the 1970s but not exploited until recently because offshore and covered in a sheet of ice up to 2 metres thick for six long winter months each year. The oil could not be accessed until the advent of more powerful drilling technologies in the 1990s. 

Logistics firm Panalpina was involved in the early years of the Sakhalin project. In their magazine from 2003, Issue 1 when the project was launched. It is rare to find such detailed information from even a few years ago on the internet, in web years, 2003 is practically pre-historic. The magazine cover image shows the beauty of the strip of island, mountainous and heavily forested. But it’s a brutal environment for human habitation, one of the harshest outposts in the entire Russian empire. It used to be a prison camp. Playwright Anton Chekhov visited the island in 1890, when it accommodated 10,000 convicts and exiles, and described it as ‘hellish’ and ‘the most depressing place in our land I have been’.

Panalpina played a major role in delivering equipment, by sea and air, for the Sakhalin oil drilling consortium, which was formed in 1995, by Exxon-Mobil, Shell and a range of other companies from Japan, the US, the UK, Netherlands and India. Sakhalin lives up to Panalpina’s description as a ‘gargantuan logistics’ project’. In 2002, more than 135,000 tonnes of equipment was delivered, including what was, at the time, the world’s largest oil rig. It was from Texas, and the power of the sea delayed landing the rig on the beach for two weeks. Air charters flew in smaller items of equipment from Seoul, Vladivostok and Luxemburg.

Exxon-Mobil reported that Sakhalin-1 commenced production in 2005, following 36 million worker hours of construction, the largest foreign direct investment in Russia. The project established Russia as key oil and gas supplier to Asia.

That was just Sakhalin-1. By 2006 Sakahlin-2 was taking shape. Business Week describes the ‘immense new landmarks’ rising through the mists as Sakhain-2 was constructed - drilling platforms, pipelines, liquid natural gas, (LNG) facilities. Sakhalin-2 taps into oil and gas beneath three platforms off the northeast coast of the island, to be pumped 800 kilometres along pipelines to the southern tip of the island, onwards in tankers to Japan, South Korea, China, Mexico and the west coast of the US. All the equipment had to be imported, including oil platforms built in Korea and towed across the Sea of Japan. Platforms are heavily reinforced against ice floes and earthquakes, as the area is seismically active. Two pipelines, one for gas, one for oil, run through rugged mountain terrain, crossed 1,000 rivers and streams. The environmental risk to salmon fishing led to protests by indigenous people. Sakhalin Environment Watch has documented the environmental risks, legal issues - including a catalogue of violations, and financing which has relied on IFIs (International Finance Institutions) including the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development).

By the beginning of 2011, the Sakhalin-1 project had exported approximately 300 million barrels of oil to world markets. In January, Popular Science reported that the world’s biggest and deepest ‘extended reach oil well’ had been drilled. This entailed drilling 12.4 kilometres down into the ground onshore and 11.4 kilometres outwards beneath the ocean floor. In fact, since the beginning of the Sakhalin in 2003, the project has boasted seven out of ten of the largest oil wells on the planet. The seven-storey oil rig nicknamed Yastreb, which translates as ‘The Hawk’, is the most powerful in the world, equipped with six generators, and the drill torque (the rotating pressure) is 444,300 kilogrammes per square metre. The rig has two walls, built to withstand the cold and earthquakes. The crew anticipated that more records would be broken in the coming months, but the year ended with the tragic accident.

New aviation biofuels - a major breakthrough?

Back in October, there was a wave of publicity hailing a major breakthrough in development of alternative jet fuel. Virgin Atlantic announced that it was working in partnership with two biofuel firms, Lanzatech and Swedish Biofuels, pioneering a process to produce jet fuel from waste gas emissions from steel plants. Carbon monoxide (CO) from steel plants, usually flared off as carbon dioxide, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, are being compressed and converted into fuel. A pilot project is underway in New Zealand, a demonstration plant has been commissioned in Shanghai, commercial operations are scheduled to commence by 2014, with the fuel initially used for flights from Shanghai and Delhi to London. Sir Richard Branson, President of Virgin Atlantic, stated that the technology could be applied to 65 per cent of the world’s steel mills, and could also be applied to aluminum and cement plants.

This project promises to capture greenhouse gases from industry, and that would be a positive move, a step change in green technology. So far, there has been a lot of talk about this, but little action, and new power plants and factories, including metal plants, are being built without this technology. But another aspect of the project, the production of biofuel from waste gas seemed not just a truly miraculous breakthrough, but too good to be true. So I tried to find out about the firms involved and the actual process used to make the fuel. It appears that my hunch might be correct, that, although the biofuel might incorporate these waste gases, an input of biomass, living material, is also required.

Virgin Atlantic’s announcement on the People and Planet section of the firm’s website states that: ‘The process involves waste gases from industrial steel production being captured, fermented and chemically converted’. There is a video showing a schematic of the fuel production process.  

Blink and you’ll miss it, but, at the beginning, along with the waste gases, a biomass or MSW (municipal solid waste) input is shown. This indicates that, in addition to the waste gases, biomass is required to make the fuel. Virgin’s repeated description of the new fuel as biofuel (my italics) certainly implies that living material is involved in its production. If a biofuel does not contain biomass, then it is not a biofuel.

If biomass is being used, the new biofuel does still demonstrate progress, in the form of non-food biofuels. Most current biofuel crops, most notably corn and palm, displace food crops, contribute to rising food prices and world hunger. But with any biomass input, I would be sceptical about the airline’s claims that: ‘This next generation technology overcomes the complex land use issues associated with some established biofuels.’ The new project sounds like a major step forward from Virgin’s first biofuel test flight in 2008, which was partially powered by oil from coconuts, and babassu which is used as cooking oil. But, the use of any type of biomass to make fuel, even a non-edible feedstock, still has a land use impact. Even if the biomass input is MSW instead of a crop, the description of these inputs as ‘waste’ can be a lazy catch-all for kinds of materials, such as wood, food and garden waste, which could be diverted from the waste stream and used for another purpose other than burning as fuel, recycled, re-used or composted.

Sir Richard Branson promoted the new fuel initiative with his usual ambition and optimism, saying ‘I think this is the most important announcement that I've made in my lifetime’. In the video, he says the airline and its project partners are turning CO into jet fuel, there is no mention of any other input to produce the fuel. He said that the project will mean the airline can not just meet, but exceed, its pledge of a 30 per cent carbon reduction per passenger kilometre by 2020. Achieving this will depend on dramatically scaling up the demonstration project, and with growing evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from some biofuels are worse than fossil fuels, for example a 2010 study by nine European environmental groups, it is vital that the entire production process for new biofuels is subject to scrutiny. Virgin says that the fuel promises a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional kerosene, based on a lifecycle analysis, so I suggest making that research available. The announcement, and Branson’s blog, invite you to find out more on a website called Change is in the Air, but the links don’t work.

If the reporting of this new biofuel fuel project has been sloppy and inaccurate, if there is a biomass input to the new fuel, it is spreading scientific illiteracy. The distinction between a biofuel production process which involves waste gases, and a biofuel which is made from waste gases is an important one. Implementation of new technologies must be based on reality, not partial information which suggests that the quest for sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels is more advanced than it actually is. This leads to falsely reassuring notions that seemingly intractable problems have been resolved, so we can continue with industry as usual, including uncontrolled aviation expansion, and everything will be OK. I do see value in Virgin’s positive attitude. Nothing major is ever achieved without enthusiasm, a vision for a better future, the willingness to take risks, over-reaching yourself. But optimism needs to be balanced with hard-headed critical analysis. We have to face up to the barriers which remain, to put the problems out there for open debate, in as much detail as the achievements and the potential.

In the US, Lanzatech, one of Virgin’s partners in the project, has been granted $3 million from the FAA for another biofuel project, which was announced at the beginning of December. Green Car Congress outlines the fuel production process in some detail, and it is clear that there is a biomass input. It explains that, in addition to gases emitted by industry, ‘synthesis gas derived from lignin, a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol’ will be utilised to create the new fuel.

Lignin is part of the cell walls of plants. It is inedible and the supply is potentially abundant. It is easy to source lignin, but will it be possible to scale this project up, to source sufficient quantities of lignin which is a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol production? This depends on a dramatic breakthrough in cellulosic biofuels, and the indications are that this is not on the horizon. Maybe there are some wildly successful cellulosic projects I don’t know about, which could supply the lignin, but I doubt it. So far, scale production of cellulosic biofuel, from the non-food components of crops, such as husks, stalks, straw and corn stover, has proved disastrous in the US, as shown in this article in Wall Street Journal ‘The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle’. Congress mandated the purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011, from sources such as woodchips, stalks and switchgrass. Only 6.6 million gallons were actually produced. The mandate was for more than 37 times the volume of cellulosic fuel which was actually produced.

The ‘half dozen or so companies’ which received subsidies to produce cellulosic fuel have failed. One firm, Cello, declared bankruptcy in 2010. Grants were given to Cello in spite of the fact that it had not built a plant, or even proved that it had the technology to produce cellulosic biofuel. In 2009, a civil fraud case ruled that Cello had lied about how much cellulosic fuel it could produce. Some of the fuel Cello showed to investors was derived not from plants, but from petroleum. WSJ summed it up as: ‘Congress subsidized a product that didn't exist, mandated its purchase though it still didn't exist… and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist.’

Yet, the US government continues to bankroll cellulosic biofuel projects. Government funding for research and projects to develop and prove the technology would be the sensible way forward, but, again, the grants assume that the technology will work and firms are contracted to supply considerable amounts of fuel. In September the federal government loaned Abengoa Bioenergy $134 million to build a cellulosic plant in Kansas, forecasting is that this will produce about 23 million barrels a year. POET, which advertises itself as the ‘world's largest ethanol producer’, was awarded a $105 million loan guarantee for cellulosic fuel by the Department of Energy.

Only two days ago, Gevo, a firm which received millions of dollars from the US government to develop fuels made from cellulosic materials such as grass and wood chips, announced that producing fuel from these sources is too expensive. So, Gevo will be using corn instead, and will retrofit its plants to make butanol instead of ethanol. Along with supplying butanol for the chemicals industry, Gevo has been contracted to produce 11,000 gallons of jet fuel for the U.S. Air Force for test flights.

Yet Gevo is one of the beneficiaries of the recent FAA grants for aviation biofuel, Gevo is to supply the biofuel for a Honeywell OUP project, and stated that the biofuel ‘can be produced from a variety of starch and sugar feedstocks, including corn’. Funding has been awarded to a project which merely holds out the possibility of inedible feedstock, with UOP stating that: ‘In the future, inedible sources, such as corn stover, bagasse and wood residues, could also be used as feedstocks.’ But, in the meantime, more US taxpayers’ money is has been handed over for aviation biofuels which compete with food supplies. Funding should not be used to contract supply from unproven technology. Funds should be dedicated to research and demonstration projects to prove, and improve, the technology for new biofuels.

We’ve been Trumped

Multi-billionaire Donald Trump began flying around in an especially ostentatious new plane in 2010. The plane’s fuel tank has a capacity for over 36,280 kilogrammes of fuel. That’s a hefty carbon footprint for flying just one businessman, his wife and a few mates around. This video gives an inside tour, (preceded by a car advert, sorry about that). 

It’s a refitted Boeing 757, which would normally seat 43 passengers. There is a boardroom, work desks, big flat screen television, a bedroom with ample closet space, a posh loo. There is gold plating everywhere, a shower with gold plated taps, and gold leaf on the seat belt buckles. The Trump name is emblazoned on the fuselage, the white seats, and all over the fittings inside. Trump’s vast wealth and private plane makes him one of the beneficiaries of US tax breaks to private jet owners. These tax breaks have continued under the Obama administration, and helped the private jet industry recover quickly from the economic downturn.

Trump has already made several flights to Scotland in his Boeing 757, where his $1 billion golf resort development on the coast of Aberdeenshire is underway. Along with the 18-hole golf course, with ambitions to be the ‘world’s greatest golf course’, the development includes a luxury hotel and 500 luxury homes, all requiring an access road. Vast swathes of natural vegetation are to be replaced with a monoculture of short grass, and residents of Menie have been subjected to compulsory purchase and are faced with threat of forced eviction. This is documented on the website Tripping Up Trump, which likens the development to another round of highland clearances. I can’t wait for local screenings of this documentary You’ve Been Trumped, which won an award at the 2011 Hamptons International Film Festival. This is the trailer. The intimidation of local people looks horrendous.

Aberdeen Airport is near the resort, and Trump has backed expansion, adding 124 metres to the northern runway. The runway extension opened in October, and the airport predicts this will help generate an additional 205,000 passengers by 2015. The airport and the golf resort are tightly intertwined in the area’s official tourism strategy. This is myopic and risky, putting too many eggs in one basket. Whilst, aviation remains a growth industry and traffic levels are predicted to increase further, traffic projections for individual airports are notoriously unreliable. Spending millions on vast swathes of concrete to accommodate flimsy growth predictions is a poor bet to boost tourism, jobs and other economic activity. Aberdeen Airport has a major role supporting the oil and gas industry, so will be casting around for new markets as the last dregs of the North Sea deposits are extracted. But banking on Trump’s gold resort is clutching at straws.

Aside from the negative social and environmental impacts, of the airport expansion and the Trump development, the economic viability of the resort is likely to be affected by the low light levels, cold, rain and wind in the long winters. Golf enthusiasts, particularly the wealthy people that this resort is targeting, will have the option to jet off to golf courses in warmer climates. Nevertheless, the Scottish Centre for Tourism said that the new air routes and the Trump development would combine to attract people to the Aberdeenshire area. In 2010, Aberdeen Airport was in talks with no less than 22 airlines, for long haul and short haul routes. China and Russia are expected to be key markets for to attract rourists to Trump’s golf resort.

Trump has been using his money and influence to block more positive developments anywhere in the vicinity of the golf resort. He opposed a wind farm next to the site, 11 turbines off the coast in Aberdeen Bay, complaining about spoiling beautiful coastal countryside. The development still might go ahead in spite of criticism from him and other opponents. Yes, wind turbines can endanger birds, and they do have a visual and noise impact on the environment, but it’s offshore so residents won’t be too badly affected. With North Sea oil running out, ambitious, admittedly imperfect, innovations in renewable energy are vital. Trump even objected to a proposal for a cats and dogs home in the area. Meanwhile, the golf resort is scheduled to open next year.

Whilst lobbying for runway expansion to inflict more aircraft noise on people living under the flightpaths of Aberdeen Airport, Trump took the opposite view when airport expansion threatened to affect his own quality of life. In 2010, he filed a suit against expansion of Palm Beach Airport, attempting to block plans for a new commercial runway. The public statement was that the suit aimed to protect Palm Beach County citizens against noise, but the lawsuit also reflected his personal interests as it attempted to prevent planes from flying over his Mar-a-Largo residence and club. Trump went on to complain about a proposal to disband noise monitoring equipment at several locations around Palm Beach Airport. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) held back on approving runway expansion, as traffic levels were not increasing, and not projected to do so substantially, and Trump dropped his lawsuit against the airport’s expansion in September.

Private jets and the 0.1 per cent

Private jets, symbolic of the further concentration of wealth among the most privileged 1 per cent since the economic downturn, are getting a bit of shtick from the Occupy movement in the US. This criticism is well founded. Private jet sales and usage are actually are actually growing, defying the downturn.

An article in Executive Travel Magazine states that the number of private jet flights in the US did reduce by 20 per cent in 2009, but, in 2010, there was a fast turnaround to growth, of 11 per cent. John Rosanvallon, chair of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association welcomed tax breaks which helped to secure this recovery of the industry, saying:

Flying hours are steadily on the rise, and there are two critical U.S. tax provisions in place that will help our industry recover. One is the extension of a 50 percent bonus depreciation allowance through 2011; the other allows companies to deduct the full cost of new planes from revenues.

President Obama has repeatedly criticised tax break for private jets, six times in a single speech in June, which could potentially bring in an estimated $3 billion to the treasury in a decade. He is talking the talk, appearing to support the 99 per cent who are paying for higher fuel costs for less glamorous travel in cars and buses, but the thing is, the tax break on depreciation was part of his own administration’s stimulus package.

As of 2010, there were 11,000 private jets in the US. Only a minute percentage of people, at the pinnacle of wealth, could afford to own one. A Wall Street Journal article explains that the cheapest new entry level jet costs $5 million, plus $500,000 per year in operating costs. The majority of jet owners have a net 'worth' of $100 million plus, and ‘earn’ at least $10 million a year. Only 29,000 US citizens have net worth of over $100 million. That is just 0.1 per cent of the population, a far narrower segment of the population than the wealthiest 1 per cent.

Not all users of private jets own the planes outright. For those not quite rich enough to own a private jet, or with other spending priorities, chartering one requires deep pockets, costing around $3,000 per hour. For many senior executives, the corporate jet perk, which can come in the form of a certain number flying hours, is an important component of their remuneration package. There is compelling evidence that use of a corporate jet is even more of a perk than realised, that the planes are used extensively for leisure. A Wall Street Journal analysis of FAA flight records between 2007 and 2010 showed that the planes make frequent landings at resorts where executives happen to have holiday homes, an indication that personal use of corporate jets far exceeded the level which was disclosed to shareholders: ‘dozens of jets operated by publicly traded corporations made 30% or more of their trips to or from resort destinations, sometimes more than 50%’.

The companies only provide sketchy information to the FAA about the purpose of the flights, and who was on board, but I’ll bet that a lot of the time the high flying executives are sitting on the beach, by the pool, playing golf or whatever. And all it requires is a few supposedly vitally important messages on blackberries and other gadgets, for it to count as a business trip. An attorney representing executives in negotiating pay packages claimed that it is difficult to distinguish between CEO’s work and leisure time, something that the rest of us couldn’t swing past employers and clients. We only get paid if we turn up when we have to, fill in time sheets, and deliver what we are contractually obliged to do.

Calling these planes ‘corporate jets’ or ‘business jets’ is often a misnomer, and its not just about being creative in how the use of the planes is presented to regulators and company shareholders. It’s about flattering executives that they are staggeringly busy and important, rushing around between supposedly vital meetings, that their luxury travel is vital for galvanising the economy. It’s much like so called ‘sports utility vehicles’, SUV’s, gas guzzling heavy vehicles which are mainly used for activity which has nothing to do with exercise. Driving one of the urban tractors is the very opposite of sport, and they are used for the same sort of journeys as regular cars, trips into town, shopping, school run, gym etc.

Internationally, there is further evidence that the richest 0.1 per cent are splashing out on private jets. Globally, there was a fall in orders for private jets in 2009 and 2010, but this was confined to the smaller models, mostly used by executives of small businesses which had been hit by the recession. In contrast, deliveries of the largest private planes, used by wealthy executives of big companies, grew by 13 per cent. Growth rate is expected to increase in 2012. The growth rate is higher in Asia, but this if from a much lower starting point than in the US. As of 2010, there were only 600 private jets in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Unsurprisingly, China is a key target market, with huge growth expected from just 100 private jets in 2010. Apparently, the marketing strategy is different from the usual process of persuading owners to start with a small plane and upgrade as their wealth accumulates. A representative of private jet manufacturer Gulfstream said that in China, once a new customer decides to make a purchase they will start out with a top if the line jet. People in China with private jets will number fewer than 0.1 per cent of the population, by a few decimal points I reckon, but these individuals will be wielding the heftiest carbon footprints.

Perfect hummus - it’s all in the detail

Most of my cooking is slapdash. I can’t be bothered with reading recipes, weighing ingredients, measuring or timing. It’s just a matter of throwing together a basic curry, chilli, goulash, pasta dish, savoury pancakes, salad, or stew with a range of vegetables, with nuts or seeds. Also, I don't like shopping enough to hunt around  for particular high quality brands, or speciality ingedients.


With hummus though, little differences in the ingredients, and how you cook it, really affect how it turns out. I make great hummus, though I’m not sure how much is down to how I do it, or the fact that it is fresher than what is available in most shops. The addition of the lemon zest, from the lemon peel, gives the flavour a real zip. Also, I leave out olive oil. The tahini has plenty of oil in it, and olive oil has a strong flavour which I think dominates and conflicts with the other ingredients. Nutrition wise, hummus is great, chickpeas are low on the GI (Glycemic Index), which means that the energy is released slowly into the bloodstream. So it helps keep your blood sugar, and energy levels stable, reducing the risk of weight gain and diabetes. 

Ingredients

150 grams dried chick peas*

2 lemons - unwaxed (I like a strong lemon flavour, 1 lemon is fine if you want to reduce the amount)

100 grams tahini (about a third of a jar) – different brands of tahini vary in quality, the worst taste a bit like peanut butter, the best smell like freshly toasted sesame seeds

2 cloves garlic

This makes enough hummus for a serving for about 8-10 people as part of a Mediterranean type lunch with bread, salads, olives etc. Any left over will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

Method

Soak the chickpeas in water for between 12 and 48 hours, use lots of water as they can expand to many times their size. I don't thin less than 24 hours is long enough for soaking, but over 48 hours and the chickpeas can start to sprout, changing the consistency so they won't go soft when you cook them. Drain, add plenty of fresh water, bring to the boil then simmer for between 1-2 hours, until soft. Chickpeas vary tremendously in how long they take to cook, buy them as fresh as possible. The less dried up and shrivelled they look, the better they will taste, and the quicker they will cook.

As you are cooking the chick peas, squeeze the lemons into a bowl and mix the juice with the lemon zest. Using the zest of the lemons gives hummus a fresher taste (that is why unwaxed lemons are best, and you will need a little grater for this). Finely chop the garlic and add that as well. It is best to make this mixture while you are cooking the chick peas, as the flavours from the lemon zest and garlic will permeate into the lemon juice, and the texture will be smoother as well. Do not add the tahini at this stage, as the mixture separates into a granular sludge.

When the chickpeas are soft, leave to cool. Do not add the other ingredients until the chickpeas are at room temperature, the lemon and garlic will lose thier fresh taste. When the chickpeas are cool, drain off most the water, but keep it as you might need to add some of this liquid to the hummus. Add the lemon juice mixture and tahini to the chickpeas. Blend thoroughly, adding some of the drained liquid gradually, if required, then fresh water if you run out, to get the right texture. A hand blender is brilliant for this.

Variations

Add freshly ground cumin seeds

Add freshly chopped coriander leaves

Leave out the garlic and add paprika powder to taste – the best makes have a hot, slightly smoky taste

Sweet hummus – replace the garlic with a small amount of honey, somewhere between a teaspoon and a dessert spoonful should do it. This sweet hummus is good served with fresh dates or figs as a pudding, or with dried fruit and chopped nuts as a very filling and satisfying breakfast.

* It’s OK to use tinned chickpeas, but I think cooked from fresh is much nicer. Soaking and cooking the chickpeas is a bit of a palaver, but the fresh version has a nutty taste which the canned version doesn’t.

Chickpeas can be grown in the UK, but I've not found any in the shops. The young plants look really pretty. Here are some from a few years ago, in Bradford.