Ed Miliband's Oil Blockade is a War of Attrition Against the British Public

Who needs enemies with a Government like this?

As President Trump tries to regain control of the crisis created by his war of choice in Iran, much of the rest of the world is in a struggle to secure energy resources. In Britain, pressure on the Government to drop its commitments against North Sea oil and gas production is intensifying. The debate no longer divides on Left-Right, Labour-Conservative lines, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves, unions and even a caucus of Labour MPs putting the spotlight on Ed Miliband, on whom the Prime Minister has said the decision rests. While we wait for a clear answer from the Government about how rising energy prices are going to be managed, it’s worth repeating the point that greens from all parties have blocked vastly more energy than any mad mullah has.

This crisis puts me in mind of earlier energy crises and their causes and the lessons that ought to have been learnt from them. The first I can remember properly is the fuel protests around the turn of the century in response to rising taxes impacting UK logistics firms. There have been other energy shocks and today’s is being compared with those of the 1970s. But crises emerge out of particular circumstances that are often much longer in the making. Since the 90s, it has not been angry truck drivers that have blocked energy infrastructure: it is European governments and the EU.

Since 1990, Europe’s dependency on natural gas imports increased from 50% to 90%. And the continent’s oil imports remained above 90%. Recognising the problem that Europe has little by way of indigenous oil amenable to conventional extraction and was only able to service half of its own needs for natural gas, the geniuses that populate the UK and EU member states’ governments decided to ‘phase out’ coal – which Europe did have – and restrict and prohibit further gas exploration, including fracking.

Yet substantial shale gas and oil deposits straddle the entire continent, north to south and east to west.