It shouldn’t have taken an Iranian attack on the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Qatar for us to realise the benefits of being able to produce our own oil and gas. [some emphasis, links added]
As the world becomes more dangerous, we must ditch fantasy net-zero thinking and prioritize our own energy resilience.
This week, the conflict in the Middle East means the Strait of Hormuz – one of the most important shipping routes for oil and gas – is out of action.
Qatar has shut down production, taking a fifth of global LNG supplies out of the market in a single day and sending gas prices to three-year highs.
All of this has shown up our luxury belief that we in Britain are better off keeping our own oil and gas in the ground while making ourselves more reliant on Qatari LNG imports.
First, let’s get the worst of the climate change lobby’s arguments out of the way.
Destroying our own oil and gas production does not mean we will need any less oil and gas. Even the captured Climate Change Committee acknowledges that we’ll need oil and gas for decades to come.
The biggest advocates of electrification, such as Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, have said we should back our own oil and gas production because it makes no difference to how much we consume.
If we are going to need it, then, of course, we should get as much as possible from Britain. That is just common sense.
Instead of maximizing our own production, we have been sleepwalking into disaster. We’ve allowed the powerful green lobby to demonize an industry that is vital for our national resilience.
Rachel Reeves missed an opportunity on Tuesday at the Spring Statement to reverse the damage that has been wrought on the North Sea.
Ed Miliband, Sir Keir Starmer’s pick for Energy Secretary, is no less than a dangerous fantasist who has been hell-bent on sacrificing our oil and gas production on the altar of net zero.
He banned new oil and gas licences and imposed effective marginal tax rates of over 100pc on some companies, leaving the sector in crisis.
And for what? So we can increase our imports of higher-emission LNG from the other side of the world by 40pc, while British production is in free fall.
The green lobby argues that there is no point drilling more in the North Sea, because “all of our gas is sold on international markets”.
This is nonsense. Every single molecule of gas that we extract from the North Sea goes into our pipes, in recent years accounting for half of our supply.
Thanks to these punitive policies, we are losing 1,000 jobs a month, squandering £50bn of investment and becoming less secure.
Under Labour, not a single exploration well was drilled in British waters last year – for the first time since 1964. Labour ministers gleefully trumpet that the basin is just in natural decline.
But Norway, which shares the same basin, tells a different story. Last year, the country drilled 49 exploration wells and made 21 discoveries.
Read rest at The Telegraph
