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(continued)

The green wing of the Labour party wants to move away from fossil fuels into renewables, hydrogen and carbon sequestration. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, represents that camp. Unfortunately, the government has embraced that view: It has promised to “manage existing oil and gas fields for their lifespan,” but it’s “committed not to issue licenses to explore new fields.”

Others, including officials in the UK Treasury, take a more pragmatic approach, recognizing that the economy will need oil and gas for decades to come. I agree: It’s better to pump those fossil fuels at home, where they generate wealth, jobs and tax revenue, than import them, where the profit goes to someone else. Norway is an example: It’s expanding its North Sea oil industry, while also embracing the energy transition faster than many others. For that to happen, the British North Sea, which is more mature as a basin than the Norwegian portion, needs lower taxes and the ability to drill new oil and gas fields. If not, its decline would accelerate notably.

The Labour government has demonstrated it can be practical, for example, by approving a huge expansion of London’s main airport. Prime Minister Keir Starmer should recognize that the North Sea deserves its Heathrow moment. In this case, windfall taxes should be the starting point.

Let common sense prevail in the government about the North Sea.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-19/north-sea-the-uk-is-taxing-an-oil-windfall-that-doesn-t-exist?srnd=homepage-europe

What’s an “unusually high” oil price?

The answer will dictate the moribund British oil industry’s future. Once a source of national pride and economic security, the North Sea today faces a grim future under the weight of inflated taxes targeting unusually high prices.

In May 2022, weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed Brent crude to $139 a barrel, the government, then controlled by the Conservative party, slapped a windfall tax on producers. The Energy Profits Levy took the North Sea petroleum industry’s tax rate to 65%. It was supposed to continue until the end of 2025. But soon after, the government hiked the tax again — to 75% — and delayed its sunset until 2028. Finally, last year, the Labour government increased the rate to 78% and extended it to 2030.

The impact has been devastating. Historic names of the North Sea are announcing they will shut down all production far earlier than expected. Others are cutting spending and firing workers. Oil output has fallen to a 48-year low.

Now the government wants a rethink: a new system that adapts to different price levels, providing certainty to companies and their investors. Thus why it’s asking what unusually high prices mean, so it can create a tiered rate. The fiscal review is part of a broader consultation about the North Sea, where green policy, energy security and tax revenue collide.

Everyone involved in the ongoing consultation, from oil companies to green activists, is coming up with their own answers. Surely, there’s a mathematical formula that solves the question of what unusually high prices are. But there’s also common sense.

Back in 1964, the US Supreme Court faced a tricky controversy. A case required answering a delicate question: What’s “obscenity”? The court hesitated with a definition. But Justice Potter Stewart found a way out with a famous common-sense precedent: “I know it when I see it.”

Well, look at the market now and you won’t see obscenely high oil prices. In nominal terms, Brent is changing hands at around $65 a barrel, the same level as 20 years ago. Adjust the price to account for the inflation and, in real terms, oil is today cheaper than it was in the mid-1980s. Simply put, the UK is taxing a windfall that doesn’t exist.

The government should recognize it and, at the very least, reduce the rate; better even, eliminate the levy. If it wants to hit fossil fuel extraction with high taxes, irrespective of the prices, then it should make its case; so far, it hasn’t. Waiting to act until 2030, when the levy is supposedly expiring, would be too late.

The taxation review is one of the three consultations the UK government has launched that would define the North Sea for the rest of its existence. The green wing of

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It is one thing for green lunacy to be active at the fringes. But it is not right that net-zero fanaticism has been embraced so roundly at the very top, among political leaders in more than one party: it is not right in a historical context, nor by basic standards nor even by science, which requires a search for better explanations for problems, not pretending to solve them by hurtling us all back to the stone age.

Https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/17/refuse-to-live-ed-miliband-grim-future-without-shower/

Ed Miliband is obsessed. The Energy Secretary is fired by the same manic hubris, that messianism that brings traffic to a halt, wastes police time and ruins people’s days, as the loony green groups Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. As with so many eco-zealots, people, indeed those Labour was elected to serve, are fodder, expendable, to be swept aside, as the dystopian vision for Britain – a decarbonised grid in five years from now – is forced on us.

On Labour’s election, Miliband promised to “move fast and build things” to the tune of £40 billion in investment per year. By “building things”, might Miliband actually mean destroying things? One thinks here of the planned halting of North Sea oil and gas drilling licences whose main effects will be that we are left with greater dependency on enemy states for gas and, it is estimated, over 100,000 British jobs are lost.

Unsurprisingly, Miliband has become an increasing liability for Labour. His plan to rewire the whole national grid and power the country, in short order, with wind and solar – a process that will be full of faults, eyesores, and grievous noise and other nuisances – are at “the limits of what is feasibly deliverable”, according to the Government’s own National Energy System Operator. It’s embarrassing.

It also won’t work, not just because it is not “feasibly deliverable” but because this is still Britain, and we can’t be entirely railroaded by the eco lobby. I am no fan of Reform, but I did find a degree of satisfaction in the deputy chairman Richard Tice’s warning to Labour about its renewables plans for his region. “We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.”

Critics raged about how such a view translates to wishing for the loss of thousands of jobs created by the net-zero infrastructure industry. But this is a bit like pointing to the cost of fire extinguishers when trying to stop Rome burning.

Meanwhile, going full-tilt for net zero as Miliband desires is widely understood to be incredibly dangerous and a huge national security risk. Shutting down our own pipeline of gas means dependency on and vulnerability to the likes of Qatar, not exactly a liberal democracy, and a major exporter of natural gas to us.

Meanwhile, China makes 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels, and you can’t remake an energy grid in the image of Miliband’s dreams without being up to your ears in its monopoly on green energy. While Labour is busy cosying up to China, perhaps it should be thinking more about the American discovery of “communication devices” in Chinese-made solar power batteries and converters, which connect the panels to the grid. .................

The Energy Secretary is accused of adding billions to UK energy bills without proper scrutiny

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/17/ed-miliband-piles-billions-net-zero-costs-without-scrutiny/

Ed Miliband has a problem. While his net zero crusade has long promised cheaper energy for households, a new report this week will point to a wildly different reality. According to analysis by consultant Kathryn Porter, green levies on energy bills will hit £20bn by the end of the decade.

Staggeringly, this is up from £5bn in 2015, as the vast cost of Miliband’s radical clean energy ambitions rapidly adds up.

As part of Porter’s report into green levies, The True Affordability of Net Zero, she claims the renewables obligation scheme – which is responsible for supporting wind farm construction – is alone adding £7.8bn a year to power bills. That is despite it being closed to new entrants seven years ago. Its successor, the Contracts for Difference scheme (CfD), is adding another £2.3bn, she says.

The scale of the increase in levies over the past decade has alarmed many in the industry who question whether Miliband has a democratic mandate to raise such huge sums via a levy system that few consumers understand.

“If this money was being raised through taxation, it would be scrutinised by the Treasury, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and by voters at general elections,” says Porter.

“But instead, Miliband is taking these subsidies from the pockets of consumers and giving them to renewable generators – without ever having had to win approval for the idea in an election.

“This mattered less in the past because the amounts were much smaller, but they have become far too large to stay in the shadows.”

As part of her analysis, Porter analysed 10 levies that are eventually added to the bills paid by households and businesses.

She argues that the imposition of such levies is what has led to the UK paying the highest industrial electricity prices in the world, as well as the fourth-highest domestic power prices. “The costs are paid by consumers based on policy choices designed to support renewable generation and the drive to net zero,” says Porter.

..................

Ed Miliband’s net zero fantasy is turning into a real-life nightmare

The Energy Secretary’s green fanaticism exposes Britain to the risk of Chinese sabotage

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/16/ed-milibands-net-zero-fantasy-turning-into-nightmare/

The net zero fantasy-land that Ed Miliband inhabits is a world of rainbows and unicorns where the sun shines 24 hours a day and the wind always blows. It is a mystical utopia in which zero carbon energy is abundant and so cheap it is practically free.

Meanwhile, the path to this arousing green nirvana is so smooth that one day we will surely be invited to skip down it in bare feet, holding hands and singing “Kum ba yah”.

Unfortunately for wide-eyed Ed, it is becoming screamingly obvious to any objective observer that the world as he sees it isn’t just some harmless day-dream conjured up by a gullible idealist, it is far worse......

Left unchecked and allowed to continue in his blind pursuit of this clean energy Arcadia, the Energy Secretary will instead drag us into a fool’s paradise, fraught with danger and catastrophe that could ultimately cost lives.

If that sounds sensational then consider the findings of American experts who have uncovered devices in Chinese-made solar panels and batteries that could enable the circumvention of security firewalls so that they could be switched off remotely.....

This is truly the stuff of 21st century nightmares. As shadow energy minster Andrew Bowie warned recently: “This green revolution will come with a ‘Made in China’ label.”

Indeed, that moment is already upon us, to such a degree that the renewables industry in Britain is almost completely dependent on Chinese products and components, particularly when it comes to solar panels and batteries.This is truly the stuff of 21st century nightmares. As shadow energy minster Andrew Bowie warned recently: “This green revolution will come with a ‘Made in China’ label.”

Indeed, that moment is already upon us, to such a degree that the renewables industry in Britain is almost completely dependent on Chinese products and components, particularly when it comes to solar panels and batteries.

......Such revelations should strengthen the case for a dramatic re-think of Britain’s turbocharged energy transition. The outages in Spain and Portugal have exposed the grave weaknesses in electricity grids that are too dependent on renewables.

At the same time, the world caught a terrifying glimpse of how quickly a wholesale blackout can trigger complete paralysis with trains, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access failing across the Iberian peninsula.......

Https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/572531/union-doubt-mass-job-cuts-will-change-westminster-energy-policy/

Don't you just love the pic with the 3 laughing d*cks (Sarwar, Starmer, Miliband)?

Sincere condolences, Monkey! No long term term holder made money on ENQ.

Energy giant’s owner casts doubt on Labour’s promise to lower household energy bills

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/13/net-zero-will-not-bring-electricity-prices-down-british-gas/

Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of British Gas’s parent company Centrica, wrote on LinkedIn that the shift to renewable power “will NOT materially reduce UK electricity prices from current levels”.

He added: “They may give price stability, and avoid future price spikes based on the international gas market, but they will definitely not reduce the price.”

Mr O’Shea based his conclusion on an analysis comparing the cost of renewable energy with gas, showing that the cheapest renewables cost roughly the same as gas and the most exotic are up to three times as expensive.

It suggests that the move to an energy system based around wind farms, solar parks or emerging technologies like tidal power will not lead to lower bills.

The verdict from the boss of one of Britain’s biggest energy providers represents a damning rebuttal of Labour’s pledges to consumers.

Mr O’Shea said: “We need to stop having a polarised debate populated with unsubstantiated, but convenient, sound bites.

“I fully support the move to a cleaner energy system. I am simply very frustrated that people peddle misinformation at best, and disinformation at worst.”

Mr O’Shea’s analysis centres on the role of Contracts for Difference (CfD), the system under which the Government guarantees renewable energy developers an inflation-linked minimum price for each megawatt hour of electricity their schemes produce.

Mr O’Shea said: “There’s a bit of confusion on whether renewables will bring down energy prices from where they are today. People talk about the UK electricity price being set by international gas prices and therefore point to renewables giving us price reductions.

“However, the truth is a bit more nuanced. Wholesale electricity prices in the UK may well be set by international gas prices, but the wholesale price does NOT set the price that the majority of consumers pay in the UK.

“Why is that? It’s because of the Contract for Difference that renewable energy producers get. Essentially, no matter the wholesale price, renewable producers with a CfD get the ‘CfD strike price’.”

In the UK the minimum prices set by CfD are guaranteed for a set period of time with 15 years being the most common length of contract for renewables projects.

SNP energy secretary warns more firms may follow Harbour Energy job cuts in Aberdeen

The senior SNP politician told the P&J the UK Labour government must "think seriously" about ending the Energy Profits Levy.

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/572619/snp-energy-secretary-harbour-energy-job-cuts/

(continued)

Although green activists have been trying hard to convince the public that high electricity bills are all down to gas prices, if you dig into the numbers it’s clearly not true. The costs of all the “green crap” (to use David Cameron’s pithy phrase), including carbon taxes, renewables subsidies, grid upgrades and paying windfarms to switch off, are a substantial proportion of what we pay for electricity.

In other words, the prize for cancelling net zero is a massive cut in electricity bills. That is a real industrial strategy.

Of course, those gains will be partially reversed by the need to compensate investors, and it is important that the financial community recognise now that they have a duty to minimise that future cost to the public purse. Recklessly ploughing on with projects that now clearly have no future would rightly be seen as reprehensible.

As the retreat from net zero gathers pace, we should remind ourselves of where we have come from. Just a few months ago, the complete decarbonisation of the economy was seen as a sensible policy, despite the fact that Whitehall had produced neither an engineering plan of the project, nor a credible cost-benefit analysis, and with little or no serious debate of the details in Parliament, academia or the media. Assurances from ministers and officials that the project was desirable and, as a result of the (allegedly) collapsing cost of renewable energy, affordable too, were simply accepted as articles of faith.

And a faith – or to be more precise, a cult – is exactly what climate catastrophism has become. It has operated just as all cults do, ruthlessly silencing or demonising all opposition. It was only the arrival of upstart media outlets, such as GB News and Talk TV, and Elon Musk’s free speech stance on social media, that forced the important questions into the public discussion. The green establishment tried to silence them of course – through lawfare via Ofcom and IPSO, and desperate denunciations of any dissent as “far-Right”, “hate mongering” and the like.

Reform UK’s insurgency has given a political voice to the net zero dissenters and the local election results have now changed everything. We will reverse the net zero policy – of that, I now have no doubt – but there is a real possibility that huge harm will be done before we make it happen. I just pray that we are not too late.

With Reform now in pole position to form the next government, investors can see that the writing is on the wall for climate zealotry

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/09/net-zero-must-end-before-britain-de-industrialised-reform/

The local elections have changed everything. As Simon Carr of the Guido Fawkes website has pointed out, despite having only five MPs, Reform UK is already setting the agenda in Parliament.

This is as true of net zero as it is of so many other policy areas. Twelve months ago, claims from the Government benches that renewables were bringing down energy bills would have been accepted without question. Now, when Starmer and Miliband say the same thing, they sound ridiculous.

Everyone now knows we have installed more wind and solar power than just about anyone else, and also that we have the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Everyone can see that our industrial sector, already decimated by years of decarbonisation policies, is rapidly disappearing entirely. Grangemouth, the Luton van plant, a major pottery in Stoke – the litany of disaster seems endless.

The Government is desperately trying to come up with wheezes to alleviate the economic pain. A new industrial strategy has been mooted but, as with so many Labour schemes, it’s mostly smoke and mirrors – the only concrete idea on the table seems to be to exempt industry from some of the costs of grid upgrades. Like so many of the ideas that are touted by green activists, this is a mere shuffling of the deckchairs.

The people of the UK ultimately pay for the whole electricity system, either through the cost of living, through taxes, or directly through electricity bills. While it might bring a little relief to industry, Labour’s plan to move network charges would only shift the cost of all those new wires and pylons from your supermarket bill to your tax bill or your electricity bill.

If the Westminster debate about decarbonisation is still somewhat otherworldly, in the wider world thinking is much clearer – the shock of the local election results has clearly concentrated minds. With Reform now in pole position to form the next government, investors can see that the writing is on the wall for net zero. Within a week of the local election results we have had the Danish wind power company Orsted cancelling the vast Hornsea 4 project. The Cruachan 2 pumped hydro scheme in Scotland has been put on hold too, the developers citing rising costs.

Whether these moves are real, or simply part of attempts to negotiate higher subsidies remains unclear. But the truth is that when net zero is reversed – it is inevitable – neither will be needed. All those pylons and batteries that threaten to scar the counties down the East Coast will be surplus to requirements too.

Meanwhile, the financial gains to be made from reversing net zero are significant.

Click on the link and it takes less than 1 minute to fill in your name for the petition aimed at abolishing the windfall tax :

https://www.agcc.co.uk/news-article/enough-is-enough-sign-our-letter-telling-prime-minister-to-end-north-sea-chaos

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/572429/aberdeen-job-losses-prompt-snp-and-agcc-backlash-aberdeen-grampian-chamber-commerce-stephen-*****-harbour-energy/

Https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/08/milibands-clean-power-goal-branded-fantasy-wind-axed/

Ed Miliband’s hopes of achieving clean power by 2030 have been branded a “fantasy” after a massive offshore wind project was axed by developers.

Claire Coutinho, the Conservative former energy secretary, said Ørsted’s decision to axe the Hornsea 4 project had dealt a potentially fatal blow to the Energy Secretary’s goal to wean Britain off oil and gas by the end of the decade.

She said: “The Clean Power by 2030 [initiative] was already pretty unachievable but this makes a bad situation worse.”

When in office Ms Coutinho aimed to decarbonise the power grid but by 2035, a target widely considered be more realistic. Ms Coutinho said: “Ed Miliband is going to spend a fortune trying to achieve a fantasy because he’s staked his entire political reputation on it.

“Wind developers have Ed over a barrel and it will be businesses and consumers that pay the price. We can’t afford Ed Miliband and his eco lunacy.”

Dr John Constable, director of the UK charity Renewable Energy Foundation, said: “This cancellation puts the feasibility of the net zero targets into question, and puts huge pressure on Ed Miliband to increase green subsidies, which are already costing British electricity consumers £25bn a year.”

Ørsted pulled the plug on the Hornsea 4 project off the east of England on Wednesday as it blamed rising costs and interest rates. The project’s contribution would have been essential to Mr Miliband’s plans.

I don't care to copy & paste the Chemical Ali-answer from "a Government spokesperson".

The government’s pledge to decarbonise Britain’s electricity grid by 2030 is a fantasy

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/orsted-halting-hornsea-4-has-blown-away-ed-milibands-logic-mkg5lrdmk

That’s offshore wind for you. Crazily intermittent. Look at Orsted’s Hornsea 4 project off the Yorkshire coast: having a nice big theoretical blow at last September’s sixth auction round and then, nine months later, down to net-zero puff.

As reality checks go for our energy supremo Ed Miliband, what better than this: the decision by the Danish group to “discontinue”, at least for now, one of Britain’s biggest green energy schemes? It was the largest offshore wind project at the last renewable auction round: a 2.4 gigawatt monster, capable on a good day of powering a million homes.

Indeed, Hornsea 4 made up pretty much half of the 5GW of offshore wind projects secured.

Orsted's CEO Rasmus Errboe looks to be angling for higher subsidies, saying Orsted will “keep the project rights” and “seek to develop the project later in a way that is more value-creating for us and our shareholders”.

Yet what does it also say about the government’s fantasyland pledge to decarbonise 95 per cent of our electricity grid by 2030, much built on tripling offshore wind to 50GW? Or about the hot air from Miliband, who declared in September that, after a “disastrous” fifth auction that secured no bids, “offshore wind is back for business in UK waters”?

With so much riding on the next two auctions, given the government’s daft 2030 target, won’t offshore wind developers be emboldened to demand higher strike prices? And not least when Miliband’s dithering over zonal pricing has increased uncertainty. If offshore wind needs more subsidy to attract investment, how will it deliver Miliband’s promise of lower customer bills?

Given energy security is part of his brief, too, how exactly does it make sense to be heavily taxing North Sea oil and gas, while heavily subsidising offshore wind just to hit some arbitrary date? Doesn’t Britain need both for now? Yes, we must decarbonise the grid. But Orsted’s axed project is a useful reminder that, in our virtue-signalling rush to get there fast, a fair bit of logic seems to have gone with the wind.

Nigel Farage speaks for voters on net zero. A new poll has confirmed what we already suspected – voters are ready to ditch the climate extremism of Red Ed. Political pundits were claiming Nigel Farage’s opposition to net zero would be his Achilles’ heel. In reality, the opposite is true.

Politicians have to be wary when trying to find out what voters want. It all depends on how you ask.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/08/nigel-farage-speaks-for-voters-on-net-zero/

Https://x.com/stvnews/status/1920164464541725069?s=46

Https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/06/drill-oil-if-you-want-growth-city-grandee-urges-labour/

Ed Miliband’s net zero drive will damage growth while making “no difference” to overall carbon emissions, the boss of Britain’s biggest long-term savings firm has warned.

Sir Nicholas Lyons, chairman of Standard Life owner Phoenix, said the Government’s decision to back away from North Sea oil and gas had made Britain less secure and more vulnerable to economic shocks.

High energy costs and a dependence on foreign imports have left Britain at a “competitive disadvantage”, according to the FTSE 100 chairman. He warned that the transition to net zero would weigh on the economy and urged Labour to reopen the North Sea to help lower energy prices.......

Sir Nicholas, who previously served as the Lord Mayor of London, argued that the decision to stop drilling for oil and gas in our waters before completing the shift to green energy was the wrong one.

Sir Nicholas’s comments follow a series of high profile interventions on net zero, including a warning from Sir Tony Blair, who argued that limiting energy consumption and oil and gas production was “doomed to fail”.

Citing the former Labour prime minister’s intervention, Sir Nicholas said: “As the Tony Blair Institute said, hydrocarbons will remain part of the mix for several decades still to come. And as we think about national resilience, do we want to be an importer of oil or gas from abroad, or do we want to harvest the resources that we’ve got?”

Both Reform and the Tories are piling pressure on Labour to change its stance on net zero, with the former declaring war on some projects in the countryside in the wake of its success in local elections.

Labour’s union backers are also calling for the strategy to be redrawn, with the leaders of both Unite and GMB warning that the race to net zero is destroying jobs.

Sir Nicholas added that rushing to decarbonise would make little difference to global emissions.

PS: At the end of the article there is the obligatory "Chemical Ali"-answer from "a government spokesperson", it is an insult to anyone with common sense.

Sorry, messed up the copy and paste. Again :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/07/uk-biggest-north-sea-operator-slashes-jobs-windfall-tax/

One of the UK’s largest oil and gas producers has been forced to cut 250 jobs in Aberdeen, blaming the Government’s windfall taxes for making the Britain’s energy industry unprofitable.

Harbour Energy, which operates in the North Sea, said a review of its operations would lead to the loss of 250 onshore roles – equal to 25pc of its workforce.

In a clear warning to Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Scott Barr, the company’s managing director, also said that Harbour could pull out of two carbon capture projects that are crucial to the UK’s net zero ambitions.

The announcement will send shock waves through the UK offshore industry and Aberdeen.

Harbour Energy provides roughly 15pc of the UK’s oil and gas – making it vital to national energy security. Through its supply chain, the company is also one of north-east Scotland’s key job generators.

“The review is unfortunately necessary to align staffing levels with lower levels of investment, due mainly to the Government’s ongoing punitive fiscal position and a challenging regulatory environment,” Mr Barr said.

“Harbour remains among the largest producers in the UK North Sea and, while our dedicated and highly skilled people will continue to produce vital energy safely and responsibly, we must take these difficult steps in response to the challenges presented by the current external environment.”

Successive governments have taken aim at the North Sea, with the last Conservative administration imposing a 75pc windfall tax in 2022, and Labour raising that to 78pc last year.

The windfall tax meant Harbour swung from a near $1bn profit to an $8m (£6.3m) loss last year. The UK tax changes meant Harbour was paying an effective tax rate of 102pc.

The industry was hit by a further blow last year when Mr Miliband banned further exploration for new oil and gas fields – even though the UK is spending billions of pounds a year importing fossil fuels.

Harbour’s moves also threaten plans to build a CO2 capture and storage industry.

The company is a key partner in the Humber-based Viking project to transport and store 15m tonnes of CO2 a year in the North Sea’s Southern Gas Basin.

It is also involved in Scotland’s Acorn project to store at least 5m tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.

Mr Barr criticised the Government’s slow progress and warned that Harbour could pull out of such schemes.