Labour and the SNP are in thrall to eco-zealots – and we all face paying terrible price

NEWS in from ‘progressive’ right-on Norway. In recent weeks, government ministers there have asked energy companies to leave ‘no stone unturned’ in the search for new oil and gas fields in areas such as the Barents Sea in the Arctic.

Last year, Norway overtook Russia as the largest exporter of natural gas to Europe. It is capitalising on the fall-out from the Ukraine war. The plan is to put the profits from oil and gas towards accelerating its domestic transition to renewables.

Already, 50 per cent of its domestic energy is sourced from clean electricity, the highest figure in Europe. The expertise that drills gas for use around the continent is being used to construct the green revolution at home.

Britain could be following suit. While the North Sea is no longer the overflowing reserve of oil and gas it once was, between ten billion to 20billion barrels remain undeveloped on the UK continental shelf.

Yet far from using our remaining reserves to boost export earnings, isolate President Putin and push ahead with our transition to a renewable energy future, it seems our country is instead preparing to adopt its favourite national pastime: shooting itself in the foot.

The mood within the North Sea sector is grim. ‘In disarray,’ says one senior industry insider when I spoke to him on Monday. ‘There are 21 projects scheduled for this year which are now delayed.’

Leery

A series of tax raids by the supposedly business-friendly Conservative Government has seen investment dry up. Yet it could soon get worse. At the weekend, a source close to Sir Keir Starmer declared Labour would, if elected, block any new exploration in the North Sea.

The SNP, while yet to be quite so forthright, is equally leery. The political herd is moving and, with Labour favourites to win the next General Election, an enormous ‘closed for new business’ sign is being hung over one of Britain’s biggest exporting industries.

It is, by turn, economically illiterate, climactically pointless and politically dumb.

The Norwegians must be laughing themselves silly.

The motives are depressingly superficial. ‘Big Oil’ is now seen as toxic, especially among the young. For our pro- gressive politicians, hugging the radicals of the green revolution is the exciting and virtuous political place to be.

Rather than deal with tradeoffs and difficult decisions, they prefer to declare blithely that unlimited terawatts of clean carbon-free energy can be magically pumped into every home in the land by the end of the decade.

There’s money in it too. Yesterday the Daily Mail revealed Labour received £1.5million in donations from Dale Vince, the boss of green energy firm Ecotricity and a supporter of eco-anarchists Just Stop Oil.

The middle-class revolutionaries whose idea of activism is to throw orange dust over a few petunias at Chelsea are winning. But what a pyrrhic victory this is. It will damage us all, deeply.

First, take the economics. Absent the end of civilisation as we know it, the world will continue to need oil and gas for many decades to come.

Green technologies, while advancing rapidly, won’t cut it. More than a third of the oil and gas Britain needs comes from our own shores, supporting 200,000 jobs.

But as David Whitehouse, the chief executive of the trade body Offshore Energies UK, made clear on BBC Radio Scotland this week, without further investment we will have to import gas instead.

‘We’re estimating that by the end of the decade, the UK will be importing over 80 per cent of its oil and gas needs,’ he declared. In short, stopping new domestic exploration means we export the jobs and wealth which are currently in the UK to foreign shores.

Pin-prick

Then there’s the climatic pointlessness. Let’s leave aside the fact Britain’s emissions are a pin-prick in the global total: stopping new exploration in the North Sea will simply force Britain to buy more oil and gas from European producers or continue to source more carbon-intensive liquified gas from America.

So by ending the North Sea, we produce more carbon, not less. Worse, by demolishing the North Sea infrastructure, we will deprive ourselves of the people, skills and the supply chain required to drive forward the green revolution everyone is signed up to.

Labour’s shadow energy minister Ed Miliband says he wants to borrow £28billion a year to spend on green plans such as North Sea carbon capture and wind power.

But if the North Sea sector has been demolished by then, who does Mr Miliband expect to carry out his plans? Humanities graduates?

And then there is the political idiocy. It isn’t just Norway that will be laughing if Britain aims a gun at its feet, so too will Russia.

As energy expert Nick Butler warns, the premature rundown of North Sea operations ‘leaves supply in the hands of Opec and Russia and puts at risk energy security as well as thousands of jobs’.

We all accept the North Sea’s lifespan is finite but the ‘managed transition’ which politicians like to talk up isn’t just something to be said in speeches. It means having to take the occasional risky decision.

One such decision coming down the tracks is whether to support the huge Rosebank field where 300million barrels of oil is available. But it is mired in delay.

It should surely be obvious. Doing so will boost Britain’s coffers. In turn that will help us invest more in renewables.

In turn that keeps the jobs and skills required to put it into action. Of course, politicians won’t be able to wallow in green virtue if they give the go ahead, but why not (as the Norwegians do) explain the trade-offs, rather than simply bend the knee to lobby groups which will never be satisfied?

Let us hope saner voices influence Sir Keir Starmer before his energy plans are announced in full.

They include the reliably sensible head of the GMB Union, Gary Smith – a Scot – who warns it would be ‘selfdefeating not to maximise extraction from our own oil and gas’.

Strangling

There was, he said, ‘no point strangling’ Britain’s oil and gas industry when it was needed to develop the green technologies of the future.

Let’s also hope that, more generally, our politicians find a backbone. Industry insiders tell me that, privately, leaders such as First Minister Humza Yousaf support their case and have pledged to provide backing to new developments.

But they are equally sceptical that those promises will be made in public. I am too.

Terrified of a social media backlash, ‘progressive’ politicians have retreated towards timidity, fearing green rage and orange dust.

The Norwegians have it right. They have a strategy and are preparing to execute it. Their reward will be to become the leaders of the green revolution.

Is it too much to ask that our own politicians set out a similarly serious position, and argue for it?