https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-problem-with-ed-milibands...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-problem-with-ed-milibands-north-sea-oil-crackdown/

Just Stop Oil continued its campaign by spreading orange paint over road junctions in Westminster this week, but why bother when the organisation seems now to be in power?

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband is said to be weighing up blocking new licenses for oil drilling in the North Sea. Labour has previously said that it wouldn’t allow exploration of entirely new fields but wouldn’t stand in the way of the continued exploitation of existing fields. Yet even this limited exploration now looks in doubt.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – which Miliband heads up – poured cold water on a report in the Daily Telegraph that Miliband had already ordered an immediate ban on new drilling. It insisted that no decision has been made yet: ‘We will not issue new licences to explore new fields, and will not revoke existing oil and gas licences. We will manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan.’
It’s hard to make sense of Labour’s energy strategy, but then again one can’t expect too much in the way of logic where climate measures are concerned: the whole issue was overtaken by emotion years ago.

Miliband’s reasoning does, however, rather raise an eyebrow.

Issuing new licences, Miliband told the Commons a few months ago, ‘will ensure the UK remains at the mercy of petrostates and dictators who control fossil fuel markets and is entirely incompatible with the UK’s international climate change commitments.’

Denying new licences for the North Sea – if the reports are true – will do nothing in itself to reduce demand for oil and gas, either in Britain or globally. All it will achieve is to reduce production from one minor player in the industry: the UK, which produced 0.7 per cent of the world’s oil in 2022, and force the UK to import more oil and gas. It will, therefore, put a little more power in the hands of non-democratic oil-producing countries. If you really wanted to reduce the power of dictatorships to fix global oil prices you would want democratic countries to produce as much as possible. Indeed, the power of Opec has diminished considerably since the US became the world’s largest oil producer.  

I don’t know how much Miliband is consulting the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, but he ought to be reminded that Labour’s manifesto assumed £1.2 billion a year in extra revenue from an enhanced windfall tax on oil and gas producers in the North Sea. How is the government going to generate that income if oil and gas companies are not going to be allowed to drill?

As I wrote here last week, Miliband already threatens to be the Labour government’s biggest liability as he tries to drive the country towards the wholly impractical target of entirely decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030 – a target which, unlike the 2050 net zero target, lies only just beyond the end of the current parliament.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has admitted that the government’s net zero commitments will cost ‘hundreds of billions’ of pounds. Trouble is, Labour’s manifesto only committed £4 billion a year of public money. The risk of Miliband helping bring down the government has just got bigger.