By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Cunningham

From the Telegraph:

Britain must copy China and become a net zero “electrostate”, Ed Miliband’s top civil servant has said.

Chris Stark, the Energy Secretary’s “Head of Mission Control for Clean Power by 2030”, said the UK needed to match the speed of electrification seen in China in order to become a new global super-power as the world moves towards net zero.

Writing in The Telegraph, he said: “China, still the world’s largest consumer of coal, is now moving towards a cleaner future: laying vast networks of transmission lines, rolling out the world’s biggest fleet of electric vehicles, and deploying solar and wind at a scale that now dwarfs the rest of the world. We ignore these changes at our peril.”

Full story here.

The deluded Stark evidently does not know that renewables supply twice as much of our energy as they do in China.

Or that China still relies on fossil fuels for 88% of its energy, against our 79%.

I don’t know whether he really is deluded or is simply lying to pursue an agenda.

But the real question is why the country’s energy security was ever put in the hands Stark and his ilk. He has never had a proper job in industry or commerce, never mind the energy sector.

His degree at Glasgow University was in Finance & Law, and his career since leaving there has always been in the public sector.

He knows nothing about energy.

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August 10, 2025 at 04:10AM

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August 10, 2025 at 04:06AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

From the Telegraph:

BP is to reopen a key North Sea field and pump new oil and gas for at least a decade, despite Ed Miliband’s attempts to cut back the offshore industry.

The energy giant is reviving the Murlach field, which was declared uneconomic and taken out of use in 2004, has now become viable partly due to new technologies.

BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month.

The milestone comes despite efforts by the Energy Secretary to bring an end to new fossil fuel production in the North Sea. Mr Miliband and his predecessors have almost doubled the taxation rate on oil and gas profits and banned the issuing of licences for new exploration and production.

BP said the Murlach field contained 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic metres of gas – enough to keep it in production for 11 years. “Murlach is expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day,” it said.

It means BP can partially reverse the decline in North Sea output, which has seen oil production fall from 96,000 barrels per day in 2020 to 70,000 last year. Gas production has fallen from 221m square feet a day to 197m.

Full story here.

What is significant is here is the introduction of new technologies to make all this possible. How many other abandoned fields can be brought back into production in this way.

Naturally Greenpeace are not happy, with Doug Parr saying “The North Sea is on death’s door. Reserves are drying up and what’s left and untapped is barely enough to keep it on life support. The only sensible thing to do is to pivot [from] the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out – wind.”

But Mike Tholen, of trade body Offshore Energies UK, commented: “Redevelopment of decommissioned fields is now a feature of the North Sea as new and innovative technologies make such opportunities possible.

“Looking ahead, the independent Climate Change Committee says the UK will need 13 billion to 15 billion barrels by 2050 come what may. We could produce half of this at home. But at the moment only four billion barrels are on track to be realised, which means imports will have to rise and the UK economy will miss out as jobs and capital move overseas.”

In what world, other than crazy Ed’s, would it make sense to import that oil and gas when we could produce it ourselves at great benefit both to the economy and government revenues?

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August 10, 2025 at 03:12AM

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August 10, 2025 at 02:30AM