Let me have another go at explaining to this hopeless government why extracting more of our own oil and gas instead of importing is good for jobs, good for tax revenues and good for the environment. They clearly have not been listening for the last three years as I and others have set this out.
- If we import LNG instead of getting more of our own oil and gas, we sack our North Sea staff and pay the wages of people abroad instead.
- If we produce our own oil and gas the Treasury receives large tax revenues. If we import, foreign governments pocket most of the tax.
- If we use gas by pipe in the UK instead of gas by LNG tanker, we save three quarters of the CO2 created in producing and delivering the gas to the users. It takes a lot of energy to liquefy, transport and convert back to gas which you do not need for gas by pipe.
- There is no world price for gas. US wholesale gas is around 75% cheaper than UK wholesale gas because it is gas down a pipe in the US sold under contract. The UK no longer has enough contract gas to keep the price down. There is a world price for internationally traded LNG and that is usually higher than contract gas to cover all the extra costs.
- Availability of local gas by pipe helps keep open chemical industry plants that use natural gas as a feedstock. The present government is presiding over the collapse of our gas dependent chemical industry.
- Some of our oil production will be exported, but this is much better than just importing more oil. If you import too much overall with no export offsets you need to borrow or sell assets to pay the bills and can end up with a balance of payments crisis.
Kemi Badenoch has rightly called on the government to lift the bans on new exploration and development of known oil and gas reserves. The government should immediately press ahead with the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields. The existing pipes and production platforms in the North Sea have spare capacity which can be used for some of the new developments, speeding up their production and cutting the costs of doing so. Claire Couthino, the Shadow Energy Secretary, gave the go ahead for Rosebank in 2023. It took this Labour government to slow it up and then seek to prevent it altogether.
In 2023 Claire Couthino as Energy Secretary argued that continuing to extract the North Sea’s oil and gas reserves “is important for maintaining domestic security of supply and making the U.K. less vulnerable to a repeat of the energy crisis that caused prices to soar after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.” She was right to approve Rosebank. It would have helped today if Labour had not introduced a ban.
March 30, 2026
Good for the Balance of Payments as well.Reduce our dreadful deficit on the Trade Balance
March 30, 2026
Preaching to the choir John. Every newspaper, magazine, even trades unions are calling for reopening the North Sea. This appears to entrenched the objections by the idiot Energy Secretary who sees himself as a Colossus standing firm against the baying cowd.
It is ridiculous that a single person can cause so much damage to the country and a Prime Minister who is afraid to reign him in.
As for Badenough and Couthino, we must remember that they allowed Treacherous May to put Net Stupid into law.
Reply Couthino as S. of S changed policy to allow new oil and gas but Labour introduced bans
March 30, 2026
Kemi yesterday saying she does not want to use coal but prefers nuclear. Fine but in the UK nuclear will take 10 years and cost about ten times as much as it should with all the fish saving discos etc. insisted upon! The Tories under the Moronic Cameron, Sharma, May, Boris, Sunak closed all the coal power stations, blew them up or converted them to burn wood (which is young coal and actually worse and less efficient than burning coal).
Given the hole that has been dug by these deluded dopes changing these back to coal and even building some new coal generators might be the best emergency policy. Coal is still cheap, quick to build, provided power that is easy to store and can be produced on demand to back up the renewables. This while we get better nuclear build and get fracking, drilling mining. Coal can replace the now expensive natural gas leaving that for the gas grid and industry. Note that if the gas grid runs out of gas millions of boilers would need to be expensively checked and relit!
Electricity from Coal in the UK could be sold profitably for about 12p per KWH to consumers and supplied at the times that wanted it too.
March 30, 2026
LL:
Correct. BTW, 23-27% of Germany’s electricity generation is coal.
March 30, 2026
It’s not a single person Ian.
The Establishment is riddled with people who want to destroy our energy security; many of them are found in the Houses of Commons and Lords.
Red Ed is just their current front-man.
March 30, 2026
‘ Let me have another go at explaining to this hopeless government why extracting more of our own oil and gas instead of importing is good for jobs, good for tax revenues and good for the environment. They clearly have not been listening for the last three years …’
This is a common theme on here, not just on the matter of Net Zero.
It begs the question what next ?
Presenting a case, politicking, even voting is not working.
Revolt by the electorate seems unlikely. So the cycle continues.
March 30, 2026
Quite so, this is a topic all of its own and receives nowhere near enough attention, the trade deficit is why we have high inflation, and hence high money cost.
Is it not the case that the price of ‘green electricity’ paid to the windmill owners is based on the cost of gas? So the higher the price of gas the more the windmill owners receive. How this works I don’t know, but perhaps Lord J. can illuminate.
March 30, 2026
Indeed.
It is indeed an absurdly rigged market a fraud against consumers and tax payers. Follow the money!
March 30, 2026
What’s good for the balance of payments the government will just spend and waste, to no advantage to the average Brit.
March 30, 2026
Kemi Badenoch will today unveil plans to slash almost £200 off energy bills as she steps up pressure on ministers to lift the ban on new drilling in the North Sea. She doesn’t want to stop there what about fracking and the reserves we have on land as for earthquakes it was minor in Blackpool no more than a large lorry running past your house, funny the tories have changed there tune on drilling could it be that’s a front runner of the Reform party
March 30, 2026
Mrs Badenoch was asked yesterday (on the Camilla show) about fracking. Her answer was “it’s up to local people” – no Kemi it isn’t. You will never frack if you make it optional. There has to be a national policy that allows onshore fracking, albeit under strict regulations. By all means give locals incentives but get some backbone into your policy too…
Reply It needs to be locally driven and can be with the right pattern of incentives. Each project needs to get planning approval, as happened with the successful Wytch Farm Dorset oil field.
March 30, 2026
The UK’s last two fracking wells, located at Preston New Road, Lancashire, are being permanently sealed with concrete following a direct order from the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).
Cuadrilla, the operator, was ordered to plug and abandon both wells and remove surface equipment by the summer of 2025.
We are clearly governed by moronic vandals (politicians, “experts” and regulators what drives these deluded dopes? is it corruption or stupidity?
March 30, 2026
It was Ed Davey who instituted the rules limiting fracking to 0.5ML for oil and gas while leaving the 4 ML limit in place for geothermal. The scale is logarithmic, so the difference is a factor of 3,000 in terms of energy.
March 30, 2026
They are deliberately destroying our manufacturing capability; our energy security; food security and defence capability. The original structure of the EEC/EU required the member nations to be inter-dependent on the necessities for war (coal, steel, food) and for the member nations to be controlled by a “higher authority” … the EU Bureaucrats, safely immune from democracy.
They are still pursuing that objective: just substitute “coal” for energy. We are technically out of the EU, but we are still significantly controlled by them and the Establishment (Two-Tier) is pursuing a policy intended to make us rejoin because it will be impossible to survive as a Sovereign, independent nation.
If we were self-sufficient in energy, their primary objective would be significantly weakened.
March 30, 2026
Big Oil and the fossil fuel lobby will love today’s post. We should remember that oil price shocks did huge damage to the economy in the 1970’s, causing 28% inflation and the loss of millions of jobs
Trump’s war of aggression on Iran will cause similar damage to our economy. The only way to prevent this is to get off fossil fuels completely. Iran is just the latest petrostate to hold us to ransom.
We need cheap homegrown renewable energy for our economy and not price gouging at the pumps with forecourt firms ripping off the public
Reply How do you make plastics, fertiliser, synthetic fabrics etc without oil and gas feedstock?
March 30, 2026
@Reply, not forgetting the oil/grease to lubricate windmills, or the cables to supply the electricity. Ill thought through madness.
Research has shown that 85% of the World pyro-plastics(an eco-nutter concern) in the oceans come from car tyres as they wear and get flushed through the drain. EV’s are approaching twice the weight of ICE so its not a stretch to suggest they cause twice the problem
March 30, 2026
Usual nonsense SG. By all means take up sky diving but not whilst you are still in the 18th Century. You need a plane and most importantly, a parachute to sky-dive safely. Before we rip out our gas mains we need a viable alternative. Renewables are not the answer. Nuclear could be but only if we rip up the current rule book and start over. The Koreans would be good people to talk to, they seem to be able to build them relatively quickly and to budget.
In the meantime, you can jump off cliffs if you wish but I’ve no intention of following you until I’m sure of surviving the fall. You (and your fellow zelots just haven’t hit the deck yet – although you might be about to…
March 30, 2026
“The only way to prevent this is to get off fossil fuels completely”. Not only is that NOT “the only way” it is also impossible. Surprised you’ve been taken in by the Big Green snake oil salesmen. As we’ll have to pay for adaptation to climate change anyway (as China/USA/India/Russia won’t follow Miliband’s lead) we might as well stop wasting money on Net Zero – we have already done far more than other G20 nations to decarbonise and look where it’s got us – the developed world’s highest energy prices, deindustrialisation, rising unemployment and high inflation.
March 30, 2026
Very typical of the kind of comment one sees from well meaning people, mostly but not only on the left, regarding energy policy. According to the IEA, fossil fuels account for roughly 80% of global primary energy. The figure has barely moved in decades and forecasts don’t show much expected fall in the future. The figure is a bit lower than that in the UK (70%+) and much higher eg in China (c. 90%). Of the 20% coming from non-fossil fuels, by far the largest components are nuclear and hydropower, which you either have or you don’t. the UK – thanks to the baleful influence of the environmental left over decades in the case of nuclear, and to geology in the case of hydro – largely does not. Wind, solar, tidal etc, whilst periodically material for electricity generation, are in total a few % points of total primary energy. That’s because they have very low energy density (huge amounts of land are required for the equivalent power output) and they are intermittent. Battery technology to overcome the intermittency issue advances very slowly and is nowhere close to a solution.
And that is all leaving aside the additional point which Lord Redwood makes regarding the necessity of fossil fuels for feedstocks.
So when making arguments as you, Milliband and others do, you need to address these points please.
March 30, 2026
Some facts. Only about 20% (20-23%) of the UK’s current energy needs are supplied by electricity and nearly 80% by fossil fuels (mainly for transport and heating). 20 years ago 16-18% of our energy needs were met by electricity. Not a dramatic shift. Makes the “Just Stop Oil” slogan look plain ridiculous.
March 30, 2026
In the 1970s we depended on strike prone coal for electricity and gas was price controlled by government,limiting exploration so we imported from Norway via the Frigg line. Oil was controlled by OPEC, and we had the Arab-Israeli War and the Iranian Revolution followed by the start of the Iran-Iraq war.
In the 1980s the power of OPEC and the miners was broken by alternative supply, not least from the North Sea, as we became self sufficient in oil and used more gas.
March 30, 2026
I presume Lord Redwood believes the Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak Governments were also “hopeless” since they enthusiastically promoted and implemented the destructive Net Zero lunacy?
I haven’t forgotten Michael Gove meeting with Greta Thunberg and committing the UK to economic destruction.
https://deframedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/24/greta-thunberg-meets-uk-politicians/
I’m not expecting this comment to be published, or a response. It’s just too inconvenient …. move along, nothing to see.
Reply I set out the folly of net zero policies then and helped persuade Sunak/Couthino to shift to backing new oil and gas developments in UK! If you wish to engage with my views you can read my past comments on this site which have consistently criticised net zero policies based on our shifting to imports.
March 30, 2026
I’ll make a prediction. Miliband will “U” turn on Jackdaw and Rosebank, because the Norway gas interconnector pipeline requires maintenance this summer. But it won’t make any difference to the price of gas/petrol/diesel here. Rosebank in particular is only economic because of the stonking taxpayer subsidies paid to the developer
All it will do is extend our dependence on burning climate crisis causing hydrocarbons – when cheaper, home grown renewable energy and home batteries are dramatically reducing the public’s energy bills, particularly those who have installed solar on the roof of their properties
Reply 2 nd para wrong as set out before.
March 30, 2026
Solar doesn’t make much sense in the UK SG and you (should) know that. As for “dependance” we are going to need gas and oil for a very long time – long after I have gone to Alfa (3 litre) heaven and you to Windmill Hill…(I won’t wish you to Solar Hell) 🙂
March 30, 2026
He’ll probably disappear into Mustang Mach-E 358 kW (480 hp) heaven. Or the option may be waving goodbye in the Wayve driverless version currently used as taxis in London.
March 30, 2026
If you have solar panels, you have a glut in Summer and a lack in Winter. What do you do with your Summer excess? Do you sell it back to the energy companies? Supposing you couldn’t do that, and had to store your Summer energy to use in the Winter. How would you do that, your batteries won’t be able to store enough? Electrolyse water and store the hydrogen to be used in a fuel cell?
That’s the problem with current implementations of renewable energy; there’s no storage. Batteries are fine for tiding you over night, but not from season to season.
Before installing any more wind turbines, the challenge of energy storage needs to be addressed. The wind turbines we already have sometimes generate more electricity the grid can tolerate and the available energy is unused.
March 30, 2026
SG. Solar has a capacity factor of approximately 11% in the UK so when these developers state their latest monstrosity will power X number of homes that is in fact only 11% of the time. Wind is roughly 40%.
March 30, 2026
Badenoch says the Tories would scrap VAT on energy bills.
Badenoch says the Tories would ban cousin marriage.
Badenoch says the Tories would stop the Net Zero insanity (actually, just slow it down).
Aren’t the Tories capable of coming up with any policies of their own? They’re basically saying “Nigel Farage/Reform” are right.
Why would you vote for a “Leader” and Party that relies on another one to do its thinking and moving the Overton Window for it?
Reply Conservatives have set out how to cut spending to pay for these policies. Conservatives have costed and affordable tax cuts. No other party does.
March 30, 2026
Reply to Reply,
My commiserations Lord J, you continue to fight a valiant rear-guard action for a retreating Tory Party. Your readership are in large part natural conservative voters, who are so angry at the PCP that they have lost trust in them and will vote for the new alternative. The PCP is now a rump of mediocre place holders with an inexperienced leader who always looks as though she’s struggling with presenting policies. Wilderness for the Conservatives is the best they can hope for now.
Reply No, I continue to campaign for major changes to policy which the Conservative party now supports, and some of which Reform supports. Conservatives are the only party telling the truth about the need to cut public spending and setting out how to do it. Without this nothing will work.
March 30, 2026
@Reply, the difficulty with what is now being said to gain power, is the opposite of what this same team/people did while they had the option to do something about it. It is not a new fresh team of real conservatives it the old crowd just saying things.
March 30, 2026
Badenough can only scrap VAT on energy bills with EU approval, that is why they won’t do it. Under the TCA agreed with Brussels this would be classed as unfair competition.
Reply Not so.
March 30, 2026
MPs voted against all you recommend at the opposition day debate last week. Your recommended government damascene conversion so soon afterwards is difficult to envisage. We are firmly on course for disaster that some of us have been predicting for years. It would be no surprise if the government used it as perverse justification for emergency government legislation to take us back into EU membership just before the next general election.
Reply Conservatives were right to speak and vote to use more of our own oil and gas, and need to continue the pressure to get policy change.A good majority of the public agree.
March 30, 2026
You are right MPC.
All the destructive policies this Government is pursuing have the objective of getting us back into the EU.
March 30, 2026
There is this mad diatribe of spin at the moment that says if we use our own gas & oil supplies is wont reduce prices to the consumer. It is conflating different things, the UK’s mad suicidal pricing is Parliaments own taxes, levies etc all the elements over and above actual cost.
The bit deliberately missing from the spin is the alternatives that the UK Parliament peruses, in its malicious destruction of the UK, is that their options means a massive outflow of UK wealth that will never return. All they while they deny the UK, the nation, its people the right to replenish this outflow with their policy of imports only through deindustrialisation.
The UK Parliament, its 650 MPs, with their appointed leadership have inflicted more deliberate malicious destruction on the UK than any war could have…. They are the enemies of the people
March 30, 2026
No need to try to convince the entire government John, Starmer has made clear that he is powerless in the matter and only one person – Ed Miliband – takes these decisions.
March 30, 2026
As far as the supporters of ‘Leave it in the ground’ using our energy supplies would be a backward step. They always knew that net-0 would mean shortages and suffering but that was always there, always a part of the plan.
Miliband want to speed up putting more green technologies into what’s left of our open spaces, but what I find shocking is that I’ve seen no detailed schedule of events – When will we reach that critical stage when ‘Green’ will give us all the energy we need, and what has to be done each year to achieve that.
It seems that their actions are all about filling our fields with windmills and solar panels without any estimate of annual cost of implementation, never mind maintenance. These green devices also have a limited life span, so are their replacements being calculated in somewhere?
I doubt it, after all this is only taxpayer’s money they are blowing in the wind.
After all this time they still have no joined up thinking on how green energy will be implemented – never mind the true cost.
Reply They are not planning to replace all our energy with renewables, just all electricity. Electricity is only 20% of our energy! They have no plans to displace all the rest.
March 30, 2026
I was under the impression that Gas was going to be taken off the table…… and they would make us use some form of electricity for all our energy needs.
But of course they have to be able to generate enough green electricity before they can stop buying in gas or using coal.
March 30, 2026
But they are John by insisting we drive EVs and fit heat pumps.
Soon under the new CCA 5 year plan, all new trucks and busses will have to be zero emissions and aircraft 80% bio fuel.
March 30, 2026
Reply to Reply : “They have no plans to displace all the rest.”
Yes, they do, by 2050. That is what “Net Zero by 2050” means and PM May put this ambition into law without a proper debate, without a costing and without a vote. So our energy policy is now ultimately determined by a single judge. Labour’s current plan for decarbonising our electricity, the Clean Power 2030 project, is just the initial part of this massive project.
Reply There are no realistic plans beyond decarbonising electricity
March 30, 2026
Grandmother – let me show you how to apply suction with your mouth to this protein based snack in a shell
Sir Two Tier – Ms Reeves in PPI – Mad Ed – Doctrine over fact as ever?
March 30, 2026
Its madness NOT to frack for shale gas …which is the policy of both the tories & labour …..Kemi talks about northsea offshore gas & oil but never UK land shale gas
March 30, 2026
In summing up the real problem is in not having the money or the wealth to fund a tomorrow. Just saying that alone has floated well above the comprehension of this UK Parliament
Regurgitating and paraphrasing a quote from Javier Milei president of Argentina.
Socialists have some kind of block that doesn’t even let them see the numbers. They are enemies of numbers. They hate numbers.
Its the same with the UK Parliament, they don do ‘budgets’ they do spending. The concept that money and wealth has to be created and earned is beyond their thinking. There is this lack of comprehension that when you earn you have money to spend. Instead they see money inflow being what can you tax next. Then square that with half the UK Population is unproductive as the State(the taxpayer) keeps them afloat, were with all the bans in place does the real earnings come from
March 30, 2026
If anyone is in any doubt about this isuue and the madness of Milband, Labour and the green zealots. Take a look at the youtube video of Claire Couthinho demolishing every argument against drilling for our own gas and oil.
I’ll post the link though I know Sir JR is not keen on this: So he can decide to let it through or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFpvrk3gUs
March 30, 2026
It is a question of ideology, not good economic sense. Mr Milliband believes in the climate crisis and that the UK must lead the world in self-immiseration in order to save the planet.
March 30, 2026
It’s not to “save the planet.”
It’s to impose Socialism; ration energy; control the population and “level down the west.”
March 30, 2026
I agree with the premise. But most existing rigs in the North sea are running at a tiny fraction of their previous capacity, effectively to delay expensive decommissioning. Any new field discoveries are likely to be small and expensive to extract from. I would like to see us allow as much extraction as possible but I remain sceptical that it will do much to improve our energy situation.
March 30, 2026
Everyone should follow Kathryn Porter on utube to get expert opinion supporting your logical statements..Her latest post is ” Energy bill breakdown” This lays bare the lie that gas prices are the main driver of our high prices. It shows long term graphs of gas price and wind energy output. Well worth the 40 minutrs
March 30, 2026
I think most people accept that we should be doing all we can to use our own gas and oil. That argument is won on the High Street. It’s the people holding power who are against it.
Where I differ in your commentary is the quote “…caused prices to soar after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.” We made a deliberate, self-harming decision not to buy Russian products after the invasion. We also almost certainly colluded in the destruction of Nordstream 2, at the very least by never pushing to expose “who did it?”.
We need energy. We need diversity of supply. Our own resources are not enough but there is room to increase production and bring back coal power. We should import the shortfall from a variety of sources that have product available at a decent price, be it the US, Qatar, Iran, Russia or anywhere else.
March 30, 2026
Just let Labour keep digging the hole they are in.
Although it will be very painful in the short term, it will ensure that we get rid of this destructive party once and for all.
The only long-term solution for our country is to elect a government that will put the British people first.
There’s no point just preaching to the converted on here.
Those of us who know this need to spread the message to friends and family and ensure they go out to vote for change at the May local elections. It’s the low voter turnout versus the highly organised Muslim turnout that is the problem. I’ll be doing my bit by delivering leaflets.
March 30, 2026
Who could possibly believe that creating industry, jobs, profits and taxation in the UK could be a good thing for our economy? Clearly, not the present bunch of deluded green socialists in charge.
March 30, 2026
I recall that self harm in the form of scourging was at on time a popular occupation of religious fanatics, and it seems just the same with net zero fanatics.
March 30, 2026
Ideological obsession by Miliband and an unwillingness by Starmer to change course. Starmer hides behind legislation empowering the Secretary of State rather than changing it. The great irony is we import expensive LNG from Norway who extract the gas from the very same North Sea basin as we do! We are badly exposed as we have virtually no gas storage unlike other European countries. Since Miliband’s uncosted insane Climate Change Act 2008 we’ve had a dysfunctional energy policy, we are hopelessly exposed, facing ever increasing prices and energy shortages. It’s a National scandal.
March 30, 2026
The problem is that the supply would take 3-10 years to be available
March 30, 2026
All correct, Lord John. This Labour policy fails on security of supply, fails on the economics and also fails on decarbonisation/Net Zero. This is a scorched earth policy designed to destroy our North Sea oil and gas assets before the next GE and consequently make us both poorer and less secure. Professor Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, who wrote in 2017 the government’s “Cost of Energy Review”, ends his 24/02/2026 podcast #83 entitled “The Energy Security Gap” thus: “The reason why there are so many opportunities to improve our energy security is because it is very hard to conceive of any energy policy which could be making us LESS energy secure and LESS helpful as a policy towards the defence of the realm, the primary requirement of any government before anything else is considered.”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/podcast-83-the-energy-security-gap/
Socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
March 30, 2026
https://open.substack.com/pub/catherinemcbride/p/yes-the-north-sea-could-give-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b9r3f
This article by Catherine McBride gives the details on why using our North Sea gas [and fracking] would not lead to it being sold at world prices as we only have a pipeline to Holland and liquification would make no sense. We should open up the recently banned field immediately.