By Paul Homewood
Sir Keir Starmer is standing by a pledge to ban new drilling in the North Sea, despite New Zealand abandoning a similar policy amid blackout fears.
Labour’s manifesto, due out on Thursday, will feature a pledge to block all new licensing for oil and gas as one of its key energy policies.
The party “will not be issuing licences to explore new [oil and gas] fields as we accelerate to clean power”, a Labour spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.
It follows last weekend’s announcement that New Zealand’s government was lifting a ban on new oil and gas exploration.
The ban was announced by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2018. “The world has moved on from fossil fuels,” Ardern proclaimed at the time.
New Zealand’s trailblazing policy, which was the first of its kind, became a key inspiration for the Labour Party’s own plan.
However, some in the party are now questioning the commitment after New Zealand resources minister Shane Jones last weekend denounced its own ban as a disaster – and revoked it.
It followed three years of rising energy prices that have left 110,000 households unable to warm their homes, 19pc of households struggling with bills and 40,000 of them having their power cut off due to unpaid bills, according to Consumer NZ.
Since April the situation has further deteriorated: Transpower, the equivalent of our National Grid, warned that the nation was at high risk of blackouts.
New Zealand’s shift to renewables meant it no longer had the generating power to keep the lights on during the cold spells that mark the Antipodean winter, said Transpower, as it begged consumers to cut their electricity consumption.
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The threat to New Zealand’s energy security comes despite the fact that geologists have discovered billions of cubic metres of natural gas in the seabeds around the country.
Sean Rush, a leading New Zealand barrister specialising in petroleum licensing law and climate litigation, called the oil and gas ban “economic vandalism at its worst in exchange for virtue signalling at its finest”.
Rush warned Labour off a copycat policy, saying: “There will be no benefits to UK energy security by banning new exploration drilling. You will simply disown an industry in which the UK has been world-leading.”
Jones said last week: “Natural gas is critical to keeping our lights on and our economy running, especially during peak electricity demand and when generation dips because of more intermittent sources like wind, solar and hydro.”
Such warnings are echoed by energy experts in the UK, where over 75pc of total energy consumed still comes from oil and gas.
Half comes from UK waters – but it too will drop off a cliff if Labour implements a ban on new drilling, warns the industry.
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Although New Zealand gets more than half its electricity from hydro, only 7% comes from wind and solar. Hence the need for fossil fuels.
Meanwhile the idiots who will be in charge of the UK in a few weeks time carry on living in La La Land:
Last night a Labour spokesman said the UK would do better than New Zealand.
“Unlike this government, we will have a proper plan to take advantage of our North Sea resources in carbon capture, hydrogen and offshore wind, to deliver for our coastal communities and workers.
“Labour’s plan to make the UK a clean energy superpower will reduce the UKs dependence on imported energy, as we increase the percentage of British renewable and nuclear power in our energy mix.”
Carbon capture? So they have decided we will still need fossil fuels, it just won’t come from the North Sea!
You could not make it up!
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June 12, 2024 at 08:01AM
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