Until last week, few people had heard of Horse Hill, near Horley in Surrey, and even fewer had been there.
Britain’s Supreme Court has put this semi-rural backwater in southern England on the map by ruling against Surrey County Council’s decision to expand oil drilling permits in the area.
In the process, it has put the kibosh on not only the prospect of oil production from this prospect, but also all future hydrocarbon development in the UK, including the planned Whitehaven coal mine and Rosebank, most likely in Cumbria. Oil field in the North Sea.
The High Court’s decision is a killer for an industry that has long been treated as a pariah but is worth £60bn a year in exports, employs more than 30,000 people directly and indirectly and contributed nearly £5.2bn in tax revenue last year. coup. .
That you would deliberately choose to destroy such a beneficial source of economic prosperity would be considered almost beyond belief in any rational world.
It will of course take a few years for existing capacity to be eliminated, but beyond maintenance and decommissioning expenses, the decision essentially means there will be no new investment to speak of from now on.
It’s completely crazy, but it doesn’t matter; The pursuit of net zero must come first. It doesn’t matter that the decision won’t actually make any difference in terms of emissions. The problem is not just that the quantities projected to flow from Horse Hill are so insignificant as to be of no significance. It is also stated that oil and gas not produced in the UK will be produced elsewhere.
Their Lordships’ decision merely shifts production from one place to another.
More than 70 per cent of Britain’s energy needs still come from fossil fuels; By any realistic assessment, this is likely to remain the case for years, if not decades, let alone attempts to move away from them.
The effect of stopping domestic production would therefore be to further increase Britain’s economic dependence on imports.
There is already a serious trade deficit in energy. According to the latest “Pink Book” published by the Office for National Statistics, we imported £117 billion of fuel and exported £60.2 billion in 2022. With the rapid decline of the North Sea, this deficit will grow further and put further pressure on the balance of payments. The UK is already the country with the second worst and most persistent current account deficit in the G7.
I guess one could argue that it doesn’t matter if renewables fill the gap left by oil and gas. But so far there is little sign of this. Yes, there has been a huge increase in renewable forms of energy both in the UK and globally, but this has not yet replaced the demand for fossil fuels.
On the contrary, greenhouse emissions continue to reach new records globally. Here in Britain we only ship the bulk of them overseas.
“Clean energy still cannot even meet the full increase in demand,” says Nick Wayth, chief executive of the London-based Energy Institute. “Arguably, the energy transition has not even begun yet.”
There is little point in Britain kneeling self-destructively before the climate change bandwagon if everyone studiously ignores it. Biden’s America may be caught up in the green energy problem, but it’s also still investing billions in oil and gas. Only in London and Brussels are the two considered incompatible.
There are some repetitions in the background of the Supreme Court decision. Britain may have left the European Union, but the long arm of its dictates continues to reach deep into our affairs.
In ruling against Surrey County Council, the High Court was guided by EU Directive 92/11 implemented by the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017. These in most forms require the conduct of a full-scale environmental impact study. development.
When the directive came into force, the UK had already voted to leave the EU, but had not yet done so formally and was therefore still legally obliged to enforce European laws and obligations.
Last year had a chance to eliminate them with the Protected EU Law (Repeal and Reform) Act, commonly known as the “Brexit Freedom Act”. As originally conceived, it would repeal almost all EU laws.
But this year the zero approach came to be seen as too abrupt and radical, and the bill was heavily watered down under the chairmanship of Secretary-General Kemi Badenoch.
In any case, the EU’s requirement for environmental impact assessment remains on the statute book, even if the scope and location of such assessment is very open to interpretation.
The Supreme Court took a particularly harsh approach, finding that Horse Hill bore responsibility not only for the emissions produced by the plant, but also for emissions from burning the oil.
The court also challenged government policy to “maximize” the country’s conventional oil and gas reserves. He is once again accused of judicial overreach. The courts have similarly thwarted the Government’s attempts to stop the boats and, most famously, to delay parliament’s exit from the European Union.
The European Court of Human Rights, which is not an EU institution and therefore still dominates Britain, recently opened its doors to all kinds of climate change cases by accepting the complaint of a group of elderly Swiss women. He said their right to family life was violated because the government did not take adequate measures to protect them from global warming.
All over the store, courts are usurping powers that belong to elected politicians. Is it any wonder that European economies are in such bad shape? There seems to be almost no development that is not open to legal struggle.
What was once seen as a bulwark against abuse of executive power is now in danger of becoming an instrument of economic paralysis. Like the fog in Dickens’s Bleak House, it cast a shadow over almost everything.
Good luck to Labor on its growth-enhancing planning reform, which promises to quickly bog down the legal system. Likewise with increasing Britain’s embarrassingly low levels of business investment, where the risk of litigation has become a powerful deterrent factor.
As for the North Sea, it doesn’t really matter what the Supreme Court says because Labor has already said there will be no new licences.
There’s no need to be so obvious in your plans. The 75 per cent effective marginal tax rate on North Sea profits has already largely decimated the industry.
And just in case there is anyone left foolish enough to invest at these tax levels, Labor has launched a report by Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean energy company, that says “Britain’s sun, wind and wave power.
Will the last bully who left the country please turn off the lights?