The government yesterday secured passage of its Bill to encourage more oil and gas from the North Sea to its next Commons stage.
It was an important policy change when the governmentĀ announced it did wish more oil and gas to be produced from known fields, and wanted the quango in charge of the North Sea to license more blocs for exploration. It makes no sense to run down our oil and gas fields faster than we need do claiming that helps reduce CO 2 when the country then imports LNG instead. Such gas creates four times as much CO 2 as home gas down a pipe, given the large amounts of energy needed to compress it, transport and to switch it back into gas to go down pipe system from the seaport.
Some query whether it needs a new Act of Parliament to achieve this. Why not just instruct the North Sea Transition Authority and win a vote in the Commons if the Opposition objects? Some wonder why the requirement to hold an annual licence round is set out with a minimum of one bloc, when of course they will need to offer many blocs to an active industry. It would also help if the Treasury would review energy taxation which is higher in the UK than in many competitor countries. Far from helping our Treasury that policy drives both energy production and energy using industries away from the UK.
The UK needs to take energy security much more seriously and needs to do all it can to extract more home gas all the time people and businesses have gas boilers for their main source of heat. Using the road to net zero as an excuse to make us more import dependent on energy which entails more world CO 2 is a very bad policy favoured by the Labour, Lib Dem and SNP parties. That policy means all those well paid oil and gas jobs are in another country. it means the bulk of the taxes levied on producing oil and gas are paid to a foreign Treasury. It means the UK is made beholden to more overseas energy interests.
January 23, 2024
Good morning.
Most of the oil will not be available for a number of years. It will not be used to fuel the UK market as our oil is called ‘Sweet Oil’ and is used in other processes and not for fueling cars and homes. The opposition can repeal the law and licensing when they come to power. Even if it does go ahead the money made will be wasted with the rest being pocketed by foreign drilling companies.
On the whole not very encouraging news. But then again, if you did this say, ten years ago ?
January 23, 2024
It makes no difference what you do, liebour will reverse it to show its credentials on the net zero scam. Grangemouth is already due to close because of uncertainty in the sector and just becoming a gas transfer station costing many good jobs. That will take us down to 5 refineries meaning more imports
No doubt the incoming administration will close down the rest.
Charlatans the lot of you
January 23, 2024
Indeed JR. But this government is still driven by deluded, net zero zealots with zero grasp of science, energy or engineering reality.
Sunak even claims the job losses at Port Talbot have nothing to do with his net zero targets. Clearly a fool, a liar or both. The policy does in fact increase CO2 emissions anyway.
January 23, 2024
Agree
January 23, 2024
Agreed lifelogic.
January 23, 2024
If your Government had any sense or real arguments on increased CO2 through extraction and transport then you would get fracking. The Snake canvassed as leader to frack and then quickly changed his mind in unelected office. It’s time for new Government and leadership. People who care about English people, particularly its tax payers. We desperately need Reform, they’re coming for the Tory’s and its total betrayals on everything.
January 23, 2024
Funny really.
Olive oil is a āsweet oilā
And now they process olive stones ( cleanly of course!) into ā coalā.
They use herds of dinosaurs to trample them down in reconstructed Carboniferous forests.
January 23, 2024
It seems impossible to find out exactly what the process is to convert olive stones into fuel. Very secretive.
With that and biofuel they only commit to āless CO2ā and āless greenhouse gasā. A vid of olive stone coal production looks very much as if it is made in an old coal mine.
What if they canāt grow olive trees or bio fuel crops when all the CO2 has been captured?
January 23, 2024
Oh, Everhopeful. If they can’t grow olive trees or bio fuel crops for lack of CO2 neither will there be food crops or trees or grass. Mammals and humans will be no more.
Strangely enough, the very dimwits behind all this Insanity will also be no more!
January 23, 2024
Re: āSweet Oilā – I was under the impression that for a few halcyon years we were oil/petrol self sufficient. Of course, at that time, we, the UK public, never had cheap petrol. And the massive taxes take by the Tory government werenāt used to create a sovereign wealth fund. No, the money was used, as always, to increase the size and the cost of the state.
One of my sons has just gone to Australia looking for a better life. Petrol there is half the price that it is here. Mr. Redwood – why do we pay twice as much as Australians for petrol?
January 23, 2024
I think that petrol was cheap or at least not a major consideration before OAPEC placed an embargo on several countries which had supported Israel in the 4th Arab-Israeli war.
I seem to remember 30p per gallons c1973 but I canāt remember if that was the pre or post embargo price.
January 23, 2024
In the 1960’s, 4 gallons for a Ā£1.
January 24, 2024
Yep, 4 gallons, 4 shots (redex) and 4 pence change out of a quid as far as I remember
January 23, 2024
@Mark B
The āownersā of the largest untapped oilfield in UK waters have been given the green light to begin drilling – Equinor. Note the item says they āownā it. This a Norwegian State-owned operation, using Norwegian kit and staff all based in Norway and paying their taxes in Norway whilst selling the oil on the open market. It doesn’t mean it is for the benefit of the UK. So, the UK receives ājustā a license fee!
Rosebank has up to 350 million barrels of oil, or 8% of what would be UK output.
Good on Norway, bad on the Conservative Government once more. The UK has the resources the abilities and this Conservative Government keeps giving it all away and undermining the UKās future.
Reply The jobs,investment spend and tax revenues accrue to the UK!
January 23, 2024
reply … peanuts!
January 23, 2024
Barents Observer,17/1/24:”Norway expands oil drilling,boosts production.”
“The petro-state issues another 62 drilling licences to the oil and gas industry(47 in 2022) and steers towards a 15 year high in hydrocarbon extraction.Energy Minister,Terje Aasland said:”This is important for both employment and value creation,as well as for facilitating Norway’s role as a stable energy supplier to Europe.”
And then there is Russia’s new,colossal Vostok Oil Arctic project which is expected to be producing at the rate of 30m tons by the end of this year,rising to 100m by 2030.
January 23, 2024
Will they be able to afford to lose the revenue when they come to power Mark?
January 23, 2024
Please see my detailed comment on the LNG article about the markets for crude oils. If the new oil is sweet it would displace imports of sweet oil from the US.
January 23, 2024
It’s all too late in the day.
Tories sell us down the progressive, woke river with its attendant NZ agenda and with 6 months to go before a GE they start attacking woke and commit to offshore NS
I have still no idea what the Tory party stand for. They talk non-committal crap 24-7. We knew what MT stood for.
I know one thing. The Tories put oppressive speech laws into statute that damages their own supporters and exposes them to harm. That’s the treachery of the Tory party. Vile
January 23, 2024
Oh no!
The Guardian suggests that the Ā£11 bn gas and oil receipts forecast by the OBR from this new venture can be used ( given?) to āimproveā insulation in houses ( moth and mould and suffocation) and fund the electricity needed for a huge uptake in EVs.
Open the bl**dy coal mines!
We want to emulate China donāt we?
January 23, 2024
Gets my vote
January 23, 2024
Donāt think Ā£11 bn would go very far?
Or you mean youād vote for coal mines?
Or being like China?
January 24, 2024
You get my vote for highlighting the subject ….I’ll get my coat
January 23, 2024
Norway famously has far higher taxation rates on its oil companies than we do, but are more generous towards exploration costs. However these are stable allowing oil companies to make decisions without being unduly concerned about major changes in the taxation environment. There is some certainty.
The constant moving of the tax goalposts, and the very aggressive attitude of the UK Government towards oil companies have made the UK a far less attractive environment for oil companies to do business compared to other jurisdictions. We have to compete for the capital expenditure and the willingness of the companies to take the risk.
There is no certainty for the oil companies with this constant flip-flopping and aggressive attitude towards them. I don’t think the oil companies will be fooled twice. The conservatives took aim at our oil industry and shot it down.
Reap what you sow.
January 23, 2024
Well said. I note that Coutinho has deferred a decision on a wind farm to allow for more “discussions” which I suspect means being able to include them in extra under the table subsidy regimes that are being worked on. It’s time DESNZ caught up with reality that fossil fuels are likely to remain cheaper than renewables most of the time for decades ahead.
January 23, 2024
As we saw, Tory eco-loon Chris Skidmore MP chose this particular issue of North Sea oil production to resign on, not Sunak’s earlier decision to postpone a ban on new ICE cars.
So it really really matters to the net zero fanatics that we must stop producing fossil fuels. The fact that, as Sir John points out, we have as a result to import LNG at greater cost and with greater impact on CO2 ’emissions’, is by-the-by for the climate zealots. This makes it clear what’s going on – not a rational calculation of the supposed harms of CO2, and how to avoid them, but an assault on our energy independence and therefore our independence as a nation. Who benefits? ‘US was top LNG exporter in 2023… hit record levels’ (Reuters 3-1-24).
I see we are not only importing more LNG for our own use, but re-exporting quite a lot of it to EU countries whose energy policies have left them in the mire. Again, the question is, who benefits?
January 23, 2024
Skidmore left office as his constituency is going with the boundary reviews. He’s also picked up a couple of well paid “net nutter zero” religious posts to promote themselves. Hopefully REFORM will either win or come close to winning this post as a precursor to take over the national centre right position from the Tory’s. Wo are now proven to be a far left, mass immigration, high tax, pro welfare, globalist, pro EU party.
The Tory’s have blown it big time!
January 23, 2024
It’s the obvious and sensible policy. The gweenies will be crying in their muesli ……………
January 23, 2024
Sir John
Great, sensibility returning.
It would have been nice for it to have been made available to the UK first, not as happens sold on the open market for the benefit of other. The company doing the extraction, is the seller and as most are foreign based the value of oil and gas goes as taxable turnover goes to their home country and taxed in that domain.
January 23, 2024
‘nice’ needed to have been ‘essential’
January 23, 2024
All UKCS production must be landed in the UK first unless granted a special export license which in the case of shuttle tankers applies cargo by cargo. That is already entirely in the control of government, and is why over 99% of gas production (the exception being a tiny field close to a Dutch pipeline) lands in the UK, and why the ports of Sullom Voe, Flotta, Hound Point, and Hamble were established. However, forcing UK refineries to use crudes that are not matched to their operational needs would impose lots of additional costs including the need to import more finished products. It is better to trade to secure the best supply for refineries.
January 23, 2024
Net zero – an opportunity for our politicians to fawn over the latest fads while using corrupt carbon accounting schemes that the even the OBR would reject as “weighted”.
Shame.
January 23, 2024
The lords vote to delay the Rwanda, a Bishop say declaring Rwanda safe doesn’t make it safe.
Well done Rishi
Meanwhile the UN uses Rwanda as a safe haven
January 23, 2024
The very existence of the House of Lords is an affront to Democracy. Itās another insult to the people of the UK brought down on us from MPs that donāt understand their job and purpose.
January 23, 2024
there are numerous towns in the UK which could be termed ‘unsafe’ for illegal immigrants.
January 23, 2024
Iād like the UK to produce a list, country by country, of refugees, asylum seekers that we would accept or not (undocumented not accepted) ā¦no appeals
Lets make it clear eg anyone coming from France will never be allowed to stay, not even allowed to start a claim, not allowed to appeal and imprisoned as an illegal non-citizen alien awaiting deportation
Rwanda is a smoke-screen ….if Rwanda is okay why not a Scottish island ?
January 23, 2024
This Bill is a retrograde step which has put the final nail in the coffin of the UK’s leadership in fighting the climate crisis. The Bill will do nothing to secure the UK’s energy supply, none of the petroleum products extracted will be landed here in the UK. The Bill just shows how much the Sunak government kowtows to the fossil fuel lobby.
The only way to secure the UK’s energy supply is to harvest more free energy by building more onshore/offshore windfarms and particularly, more solar parks
January 23, 2024
”
T
The UK Government will pour an additional Ā£22m ($27.86m) into its latest renewable power subsides, taking the total budget to Ā£227m for this auction. According to a statement from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published on Thursday, the government will increase the budget for established technologies such as solar and offshore wind by Ā£20m, bringing the new amount to Ā£190 million……”
https://www.power-technology.com/news/uk-government-boosts-renewables-subsidies-by-20m/?cf-view
So-called renewable energy is not free. It isn’t even cheap. And it doesn’t eliminate CO2 since the windmills and solar panels are manufactured using “fossil fuel” energy and are then shipped around the world, using “fossil fuel” energy.
So your statement is inaccurate.
January 23, 2024
It is important to understand that the “budget” for a CFD auction is part of the highly fictionalised stylised facts that are used to help determine which bids and which technologies are given CFD contracts. It has no other purpose, and certainly has no impact on the amount of subsidy that consumers may be liable for. DESNZ does all its auction calculations in 2012 money. It makes its own forecast of the revenues each technology will achieve through a price forecast and a capacity factor assumption (assuming how consistently windy it will be). The revenue forecast is subtracted from the revenue implied by the allowed strike price. The projected difference must fall within the budget (actually divided into “pots” for similar technologies), so limiting the volume of capacity awarded. The DESNZ forecasts are angled so that they think they will get enough bids within their pseudo “budget”. However, when they set the maximum strike price too low they get no bids at all, which is how every solar project that applied was offered a CFD last time when no offshore wind bids were made to take up “budget”.
January 23, 2024
Nor does it work when the wind does not blow. This has been known for over 200 years. Could someone tell the Tory party!!
January 23, 2024
here we go again. crisis! what crisis?
We have and are having lots of cold, wet, windy WEATHER.
It is winter.
January 23, 2024
Exactly. Kinnock talked on GB News on Sunday to Tominay that the planet was “on fire”. Total lunatic’s. Credibility zero and showing the calibre of fools we need to defeat. His constituency just lost the steel works and he cares not a jot!! I wonder how many of our current politicos are part funded by regimes who will benefit from the loss of our manufacturing ability and with it our national security? Blowing up our coal power plants whilst China/India etc build more. Answers on a post card!
January 23, 2024
Very true ….I believe it was God and not the IPCC that invented the four seasons
January 23, 2024
SG : “The only way to secure the UKās energy supply is to harvest more free energy by building more onshore/offshore windfarms and particularly, more solar parks”
If renewable energy is “free” why then do renewables still require subsidies?
The CfD for fixed offshore wind has jumped from AR4 (2022) at Ā£45.37/MWhr (2023 price) to AR6 (later this year) at Ā£100.27/MWhr (2023 price) and is now double the price of nuclear (except for Hinkley Point C where Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Davey doubled the price by using Chinese finance at 9% instead of UK government finance at 2%). The wind industry refused to bid at AR5 (2023) because the price was too low.
This doesnāt look cheap to me, and, not forgetting that because of the renewablesā chaotic intermittency they require a full parallel back-up system, such as gas. The Royal Societyās recent report calculates (with some large optimistic guesses) that in order to obtain a reliable system from renewables requires a doubling of the price of fixed offshore wind (the main energy generator), which then brings the price to Ā£200/MWhr at 2023 prices.
The DESNZ expect the price using gas by 2025 to be Ā£54/MWhr, excluding the carbon taxes which of course they can make as high as they like.
January 23, 2024
Thatās nonsense and you know it. Neither wind nor solar are secure energy sources without the capacity to store a monthās worth of our electrical energy requirement. We should be spending money in storage (which is largely impractical) rather than on more intermittent energy.
January 23, 2024
@Mike Wilson
It is not nonsense – you have not, as is habitual with those who post pro-fossil fuel opinions on this blog, thought to research the subject
Once we have 4-5 million EV’s charging up overnight on extremely cheap Economy 7 elecricity, we will have an excellent energy strorage system. There are roughly 35 million cars on the road today – but fortunately they are not all on the roads at the same time. When they are replaced with EV’s they will act as one huge national electricity storage system, charging up on extremely cheap wind and solar juice
Why to you think the fossil fuel lobby is so terrified of EVs? It’s because they represent an existential threat to Big Oil’s business model. We should double the number of windfarms and solar parks so we can export more EV electricity through the interconnectors.
Reply No solar at night. No wind power when it is not blowing. If you need the battery power from the car to run your home you will not be able to drive it very far! This is a delusional idea.
January 23, 2024
Do you mean those wind farms which are useless when the wind does not blow?
What is your alternative generating source when that happens?
January 23, 2024
The UK’s position of leadership has never been stronger now that Prof Jim Skea is the chair of the IPCC. However, there is no sign that China, India and the developing world are following.
Your assertion that all the production will be exported is wrong. For detail please see my comments on the LNG article.
Wind and solar do not provide free energy. They are very expensive ways to harvest energy, and heavily depend on supplies from China, undermining any claims of security. Undersea cables are also vulnerable to attack.
January 24, 2024
@Mike Wilson
It is not nonsense – you have not, as is habitual with those who post pro-fossil fuel opinions on this blog, thought to research the subject first
Once we have 4-5 million EV’s charging up overnight on extremely cheap Economy 7 elecricity, we will have an excellent energy strorage system. There are roughly 35 million cars on the road today – but fortunately they are not all on the roads at the same time. When they are replaced with EV’s they will act as one huge national electricity storage system, charging up on extremely cheap wind and solar juice
Why to you think the fossil fuel lobby is so terrified of EVs? It’s because they represent an existential threat to Big Oil’s business model. We should double the number of windfarms and solar parks so we can export more EV electricity through the interconnectors.
Reply Cannot recharge overnight from solar nor from wind power when there’s no wind. If you need the car battery to run your home at evening and morning peaks you wont have much left to drive anywhere
January 24, 2024
Assume that cars dedicate 20kWh of battery capacity to grid support, equivalent to say 60-70 miles of range. 5 million would in theory store 100GWh. But because of round trip losses, it would take at least 125GWh to charge them. At 7kW per charger, it would provide about 14GW for 7 hours or a maximum of 35GW for less than 3 hours before running out and need a recharge which would require 14GW for about 9 hours. The extra demand would mean that the power was no longer available on Economy 7 terms. However, when the weather turns cold the batteries would lose so much range that owners would refuse to let the grid use the storage – just when it is most needed.
The Royal Society calculated a need for over 100TWh of storage using very favourable assumptions. That’s 1,000 times as much as the V2G store. It doesn’t begin to cut the mustard.
January 23, 2024
Is farmland in the crosshairs for growing biofuel crops?
And so being bought up by billionaires.
Will there be completion for land to grow food or fuel ( of a sort)?
Eat or heat?
January 23, 2024
Thank you for all of your efforts in this area. However, the oil and gas industry – thanks to overall negative government policy – will surely snub any opportunity. As you say, punitive taxation is still in place, as are national Carbon Budgets, with Labour waiting in the wings. Given all of that, thereās no way that there will be long term investment by multi national firms – whose CEOs and shareholders fully appreciate the far more welcoming economic conditions elsewhere in the world.
January 23, 2024
While I am in general agreement with you I would like it all to happen faster. We have a 15 year gap to fill before atomic energy is on stream and any other technologies are developed.
I would like you to apply your Spock type analysis to the model that turns UK oil and gas from an extraction plus profit price into the worlds most expensive fuel. Tax I know plays its part, but to me it seems flawed to the core. What part for instance do the interests of the EU play in this. How is it that the USA going through the same engineering processes produces fuel at infinitely lower prices. Lets have some credible answers please.
Reply Yes it is tax and carbon taxes that gives us dear energy
January 23, 2024
Adendum,
To compensate for the UKs insane energy costs our government pays the less well off and high end industrial users of energy kickbacks to reduce the effect those costs. All of course paid for from the taxes of those who fall between, individually and industrially. In a sense this is an admission that the governments energy plan is highly flawed.
January 23, 2024
Agricola,
UK is in lock step with EU because of environmental playing field. It is Nothing of the sort, it stops UK being competitive!p against EU! Not that snake wants to be. He declared he does not want to compete with our neighbours. He enjoys our country being ..cked over.
January 23, 2024
If we adopted the attitudes that the French did in the 1970s we would have a lot more nuclear capacity in half a dozen years at most. It would use proven safe technology, and be cheaper than renewables, and possibly cheaper than gas or coal.
January 23, 2024
Reply to Reply.
Accepting your answering statement can I suggest to our patrician chancellor that an overall removal of carbon tax and a slashing of all the other taxes applicable to fuel would have a more resounding beneficial effect on the UK economy than any tinkering with income tax. Said because fuel cost is at the heart of just about everything we do individually or industrially. Fuel is a base cost, keep it low and the cumulative taxes like VAT are less significant or put simplistically, 20% of Ā£10 is much less than 20% of Ā£40. (Ā£8-Ā£2 = Ā£6 saved). I am all for lifting tax thresholds and abolishing IHT ,but the effect is long term. Hit the taxes on fuel and the benefit to the economy is immediate.
January 23, 2024
“It makes no sense to run down our oil and gas fields faster than we need do ….”
We don’t need to run them down. They should be exploited until they no longer exist.
A tiny step in the right direction achieves nothing when the train you are on is heading over a cliff. We don’t need to slow down the Net Zero economic destruction, we need to stop the train and get off.
January 23, 2024
But it won’t be OUR oil or gas.
The only good thing is that it’s a sign that most Tories now realise that they face extinction.
No EU and an 80 seat majority.
We now see the truth.
January 23, 2024
It’s your party’s government enjoying posturing and showboating. This won’t make any significant difference. Our country, particularly England, will continue its downward path, led and helped by people who have could not care less, and understand nothing.
January 23, 2024
Energy security or failure to see the signs and act has been with us for years. One only has to go back to the period running up to the WW1 . When will our politicians learn – ideally not at the expense of the voters.
January 23, 2024
Iāve lost count of the numbers of times this vitally important issue has been raised. Surely itās a no brainer to use our own oil and gas, itās more secure, itās more economic, it supports UK jobs and overall emits less carbon dioxide. Why are the Net Zero Ministers and their officials so implacably opposed to doing this? Is it because they simply rubber stamp the policies āadvisedā by the eco-fanatics at the CCC or too weak to push back against them? We now have significant new information about failings at the CCC when they analysed UK wind trends merely relying on one yearās analysis thus advising flawed energy storage requirements! They cannot be trusted.
January 23, 2024
ichael Saxton :
What “flawed energy storage requirements” ? There are none! See the 2023 NGESO FES Energy Flow Charts/Diagrams for 2035 (decarbonisation) and 2050. They are relying only on demand destruction.
January 23, 2024
PS : Since the intention is not to have the impossibly expensive grid-scale storage but demand reductions explains the need to de-industrialise as 24/7 processes, such as steel making, couldnāt survive with the chaotic intermittency of renewable energy.
January 23, 2024
I note that Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith who led the recent Royal Society study that took account of long run weather behaviour in estimating storage requirements to support a renewables grid recently criticised the work done for the CCC in a Telegraph article. He is very late to the party: I did the analysis about 6 years ago when the long run data became available, and I have been pointing up the consequences ever since, including critiquing the detailed work done for the CCC and making submissions to the BEIS Select Committee, as regular readers here will be aware.
Incidentally, the Royal Society’s work still incorporates most of the flaws of studies done for the CCC, including assuming that renewables are very low cost and will magically become much more productive in future. Given their emphasis on the need for evaluation over a good number of years of variable weather, you may be shocked to learn that their demand estimates used in their study only relate to 2018 weather as adjusted by EMBER, the consultancy set up by Baroness Worthington, supposedly to reflect a world of heat pumps and EVs, yet which assumes that demand will simply be choked off by “flexibility” whenever it gets challenging. The idea that Dunkelflaute tends to coincide with difficult weather is largely absent in their work.
Footnote: recent experience shows that we could not rely on V2G xar batteries to help keep the grid functioning in cold weather. Drivers would be desperate to hang on to any charge their EVs might have, which would be depleted by the cold anyway.
January 23, 2024
This government thinks a few tax cuts and pretend rollback of mad Net Zero policies will win against Davos preferring Starmer.
We’re not that easily fooled. The PCP as is, will be gone come the next election. Let’s hope the selection committee will be too, so that real conservatives can get elected and return commonsense to parliament.
January 23, 2024
@Peter Wood +1
The tribe that went to the WEF socialist get together as well as Starmer and Co, did include a lot of the ‘Blob’ and far to many pretend Conservatives. May and Hunt gave lectures on Socialism. The WEF Leader, Klaus Schwab is still pushing his ‘Great Reset’ and a world ruled by bureaucrats.
You me and the UK Taxpayer paid for this holiday, while at the sometime had to accept their leaving their posts and duties in the UK
January 23, 2024
Excellent article, and most normal people with common sense will agree. A successful modern economy is built on reliable, cheap energy, so our government should use every possible local source.
China and India both have lower energy costs, using coal-powered plants, than the UK, so no wonder our heavy industries struggle to compete. Port Talbot should be a real wake-up call to our MPs about the real costs of Net Zero jobs! And the way it is looking, the next jobs to go will be mostly conservative MPs.
Is CO2 a problem? The answer is No, so why does it so transfix our MPs? When did they stop thinking and become like nodding donkeys?
January 23, 2024
@Keith from Leeds
‘so why does it so transfix our MPs?’ inability to think, the soundbite of the virtue signal and to punish the UK Electorate
January 23, 2024
A government should protect the interests of its own citizens first.
This one often doesnāt.
January 23, 2024
@Bloke +1
It exports our safety and security then demands more taxes and debts to pay for the import of the same.
January 23, 2024
The licence should have been twenty years not one! The GW scam will be gone in a couple of years time as most people are now realising its all lies!
January 23, 2024
John,
I agree with your sentiments on the need for home sourced energy.
# Let’s drill for oil, frak’ for gas, mine for coal; Yes issue lots of licenses please and ease environmental restrictions.
# Let’s ensure we have enough of the right sort of refining capacity rather than just exporting it all to foreign refinaries too!
# Let’s reform markets and reverse 15 years of EU obsession with spot markets, to broker longterm [cheep] supply contracts from international allies and partners.
# Lastly, Let’s drop Net Zero and exit all international treaties related to climate change and emissions. and reform government and the civil service to bring economic growth and cheap energy rather than a CO2 neutral economic backwater.
January 23, 2024
@David Bunney +1
We are alone, 187 Countries 95% of the Worlds Population are not punished, are not punished with loss of jobs, industry and wealth creation. That is a Conservative Government and their fellow Socialist counter parts in the other political groupings desire to signal a non-existent virtue.
January 23, 2024
Refineries are not going to invest in costly new plants to handle more difficult crude unless they can be assured of a long enough future for the investment to earn a return, and for their operations not to be taxed out of existence. That requires a new cross party political consensus.
January 23, 2024
The same applies to Companies listing in our stock market when they realise the fanatism that has taken over the Tory party. ESG, EDI, non Equality laws to punish white English men. Forget merit, promote and recruit the minority characteristics or else. LGBT XYZ pushed in our schools to very young children is legalised abuse of power and law!
The Countries going broke on the alter of woke and net zero whilst the Tory’s shout useless platitudes on tax cutting whilst increasing the welfare bills, taxes everywhere and importing the world and his family at our expense and waiting lists!
January 23, 2024
didnt you get the memo John?
we are supposed to pay our way in the world by selling it insurance, educating its students, bit of stock brokering, bit of rock music, and not much else. on that we have to fund the biggest most inefficient state, and buy essentials like fuel, medicines, food from the rest of the world.
its funny listening to Wes Streeting saying how inefficient the NHS is, how poor the service is for most patients, and generally refusing to conform to the “envy of the world” mantra which tells all politicians just to promise more money to the national death service to get elected. at least thats a little bit of progress eh.
January 23, 2024
Wes Streeting’s recent acknowledgement of NHS failings is interesting. It would appear the Establishment has accepted that the NHS requires significant reform and it knows that, following decades of propaganda, only a Labour Government will be able to do it.
So they’ve decided the Red Branch of their Westminster Uni-Party must be installed. Is the BBC howling against “evil Wes Streeting and Labour’s intentions to defund or privatise the NHS?”
Of course not. It’s a mistake to think this country is a democracy; it isn’t.
January 23, 2024
We seem to have difficulty buying regular medicines for the NHS, as if we were in a third world country. A list of 90 medications with supply shortages was made public the other day. Time the NHS did its job instead of concentrating on DIE – which is evidently what they want us to do.
January 23, 2024
we should do far more pharma making in this country. the incentives are very much not to do that. the NHS buys medicine from some of the lowest quality production plants in the world.
January 23, 2024
They’re increasing the importation of the third world so we end up with the ………………………….third world. As witnessed in our capital and ever increasing numbers in all our Cities. Keep voting for the same and you will get ……..the same!! Example:- 50 % of social housing in London is occupied by people who weren’t born here. The indigenous/English population go to the back of the queue with no representation or its own Parliament.
January 23, 2024
Offshoring the UK Carbon emissions does absolutely nothing towards achieving the unfounded hype of NetZero. In fact, if honesty was employed it just increases World carbon emission exponentially.
The succession of Conservative PMs in the last 14 years are either intellectually bankrupt or they are working for someone other than those that employ them to serve.
What was PM May thinking when she pushed through laws to handicap and bankrupt the UK? What have those that followed Her also been thinking for allowing such stupidity to remain on the UKās statute. Where is the honesty, the integrity and the intelligence? The structure is devoid of any serious comprehension, it does nothing other than single out the UK Citizen for punishment. The World, repeat the World is not involved in this game.
Letās just suppose there was actual proof the UKās NetZero Laws were needed, then why has every Conservative Government Leader focused on off-shoring UK pollution and carbon emissions ā it is still World pollution/carbon emissions. Theses emissions do not see world boundaries. Why does every policy in Conservative Government diktats, favor of removing something (its wealth and wealth creation) from the UK and rewarding those Countries that have put their economies first, those Countries that pollute thee worst. Conservative Governments have sort to punish those they serve, not solve. Why?
189 Countries in the World some 95% of the Worlds population, all without NetZero Law, all free to pollute on our behalf, because we now need their goods and services and because the Conservative Government has decreed, they must punish the UK Citizen.
January 23, 2024
‘Using the road to net zero as an excuse to make us more import dependent on energy which entails more world CO 2 is a very bad policy favoured by the Labour, Lib Dem and SNP parties.’
…And too many Tory MPs.āHopefully, they’ll be routed.
January 23, 2024
Why not introduce a private members bill to repeal the Climate Change Act; at least then people who have not been taken in by the Global Warming Hoax propagandised by the state broadcasting organisation 24/7 will have a list of people not to vote for at the next election? Arguing about the illogicality of the consequences of the Act is pointless when its sole purpose is to destroy our economy and transfer our CO2 producing industries to India which has been allowed to take control of one of our essential industries and is thereby shutting down our primary steel producing capacity so that it can produce it for us. How does this all tie in with the Tory Party’s persistent warmongering or will it be re-equipping our armed forces with bows and arrows which are as much a step backwards as generating electricity with windmills?
January 23, 2024
The issue of new licences and the higher production of north sea oil & gas is meaningless if that product goes onto the international market
The government needs a bill that the UK requirements are met first before any surplus is sold onto the international markets
And what of fracking this week ā¦.is it on or off
Following brexit couldnāt we pass a few energy laws for benefit of the British people
January 25, 2024
The gas will come here, not least because it would be very costly to export it via say floating LNG. The oil will come here if it is a quality that suits our remaining refineries which are not going to invest in major upgrades to process more difficult crude without cross party guarantees that they would be allowed to earn a return on investment rather than being shut down under net zero plans. If the oil is not suited it will fetch the best price and hence biggest tax revenues if sold on the open market, while refiners would be able to produce at lower cost by importing light sweet crude from e.g. the US. The trade (or if the oil is right, UK use backing out imports) is a benefit to the UK balance of payments, cost of motor fuels and tax revenues when quality considerations are optimised. Only when we know the qualities will the best trade outcome be known.
January 23, 2024
The UK pays over the market price for its energy. This Conservative Government loads additional taxes on our energy, why, because its our life blood and there is no alternative ā pay of die seem to be the only option. This Conservative Government has created agreement with foreign Government owned enterprises that ensure they get paid more than the going rate for our energy. While in their home market as UK competitors their own people and industry enjoy low prices to undercut the UKās commercial abilities. The Conservative Government merry-go-round to drive the UK into the ground and punish
January 23, 2024
“The government yesterday secured passage of its Bill to encourage more oil and gas from the North Sea to its next Commons stage.”
We should be fracking.
January 23, 2024
We are unlikely to see any of this oil or gas it will go onto the market. The government has already accepted and agreed this will be the case.