After months of faffing around – there were the small matters of a party conference and a byelection to negotiate first – the government finally gave the go-ahead to drilling in the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea. What swung it wasn’t so much the irresistible excitement of creating 27 new jobs and securing 2% of the UK’s gas supply for the next 10 years, it was the politics. If other countries were going to carry on drilling then we might as well do so, too.
There would still be the same amount of greenhouse gases created and we wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else for our gas supply. Though we would for the other 98%. Small steps and all that.
At a time of global insecurity and rising energy costs, it was time to drill, baby, drill. So the inconvenience of a Labour manifesto that promised no new North Sea licences could be rethought. It was now merely re-allowing a licence that had already been granted and then deemed unlawful by the courts.
AKA dancing on the head of the pin. Donald Trump greeted the decision with wild enthusiasm. Though he appeared to be under the impression Jackdaw would be drilling for oil and would turn the UK into a land of plenty overnight.
No one in the UK could quite bring themselves to enlighten him. Fair to say, that not everyone in the UK was quite so thrilled. Not least Ed Miliband, the former energy secretary, and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the current one.
Miatta had sought permission to be as far away as possible from Westminster for prime minister’s questions and the subsequent ministerial statement on Jackdaw. So she had taken the trouble to go all the way to Aberdeen to make a television statement that she could have made in her own department. And she is the one worried about her carbon footprint.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
