Badenoch in pledge to ‘get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea’
Kemi Badenoch has committed the Tories to extract as much oil and gas as possible from the North Sea.
The Conservative Party leader said it was “absurd” to leave the fossil fuel resources untapped.
But the UK Government said issuing new licences for oil and gas exploration would “not take a penny off bills” and would accelerate the “worsening climate crisis”.
Extraction
A Conservative government would make “maximising extraction” its goal if it wins power, rather than measures aimed at shifting the North Sea industry away from fossil fuels.
Mrs Badenoch will use a speech in Aberdeen on Tuesday to set out her plans.
She will announce that the Tories plan to completely overhaul the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which oversees the issuing of licences, dropping the word transition and giving it a simple order to extract the maximum possible amount of fossil fuels.
Ahead of her speech, Mrs Badenoch pledged that “we are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea”.
She said: “We are in the absurd situation where our country is leaving vital resources untapped while neighbours such as Norway extract them from the same seabed.
“With the ONS (Office for National Statistics) confirming that economic growth is down partly because of falling oil and gas extraction, we cannot afford not to be doing everything to get hydrocarbons out the ground.”
Energy prices
She continued: “Britain has already decarbonised more than every other major economy since 1990, yet we face some of the highest energy prices in the developed world.
“This is not sustainable and it cannot continue. That is why I am calling time on this unilateral act of economic disarmament and Labour’s impossible ideology of net zero by 2050.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine has only underscored that our energy supplies are a matter of national security.”
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “We are already delivering a fair and orderly transition in the North Sea to drive growth and secure skilled jobs for future generations, with the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and three first of a kind carbon capture and storage clusters.
“We are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.”
Lectures
A Labour Party spokeswoman said: “We’ll take no lectures from Kemi Badenoch. Every family and business paid the price of the Conservatives’ failure to secure the UK’s energy.
“The Conservatives oversaw thousands of lost jobs in the North Sea. In contrast, this Labour Government is investing in the North Sea’s clean energy future, creating good jobs in offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, as we take back control of our energy for good.”
Offshore Energies UK chief executive David Whitehouse said: “As long as the UK continues to use oil and gas, it makes sense to produce as much of it as we can here at home.
“Every barrel of oil and gas we leave in the North Sea is a barrel we’ll need to import.
“Even in a net zero future, the UK will use 10-15 billion barrels of oil and gas between now and 2050. Current plans show the UK will produce less than four billion barrels, leaving us increasingly reliant on imports.
“Producing it here supports jobs, strengthens our economy, and improves our energy security.”
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How about committing to “do a Norway” and put all of the profits of this venture into a sovereign wealth fund and put it to work growing the economy instead of lining the pockets of billionaires?
Oh I see. Your oil and gas sponsors don’t like that idea. So it wasn’t about economic growth after all.
Exactly and whichever way we go on energy generation, the fraud line about reducing bills will never happen for us cash cows as the punitive greed driven shareholder tyranny will not allow it.
Over the years the amount of duty levied on fossil fuels in Norway is about the same as that levied in the United Kingdom. The difference being is that Norway investd it in a sovereign wealth fund but the United Kingdom (not Scotland) used that cash to subsidise international banking activity of the United Kingdom, that of the city in London. Norway also had concurrent greater investment in infrastructure per capita and greater proportion of GDP on social welfare.
One big difference you overlooked. The company doing the extraction in Norway was state owned.
I wonder how long it will take Labour to start this drilling.
BadEnoch prepared to cost us a lot more in energy. This incarnation of the Tory party are bereft of ability.
Green energy is now overtaking fossil fuels, but she will mess it all up.
I bet all those naive Scots who voted no to independence in 2014 are happy at this intention. Trump has, “drill drill drill.” Badenoch’s rallying cry, ” take Tory take.” They were warned. Scotland could have been so much more. The Norway of Britain. So much potential. But with this alarming news unless they act now will fast become a husk sucked dry to the bone forever dependent on Whitehall’s begging bowl, not a proud resource rich nation it still is.
“We are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields”
However, will they issue production licenses to the fields that the Tories issued exploration licenses to before they left power? This wording would seemingly let them do that.
The claim by the Labour government in Westminster that extracting remaining natural gas from the north sea will “not take a penny off bills” is a clearly false. A contradiction of the experience of the last few years of a trebling of bills resulting in halving of natural gas supplies from Russia due to the Ukraine war. Whether it’s a good idea is another matter, for environmental reasons. Price stability has only been obtained by increasing the import of LNG from Qatar and Algeria and increasing imports from Norway, inevitably more expensive than piping direct from the north sea or… Read more »
The price is set globally so there’s no discount for locally produced gas. Why would any business sell it for less than they can get elsewhere? They are not charities and shipping costs are negligible.
There goes their Green vote!
Blimey! They really are delusional.