AEP Loses Plot Again

By Paul Homewood

I’m beginning to think AEP has serious cognitive issues:

He writes:

If the Conservative Party must sacrifice a climate pawn to appease the zeitgeist and maintain electoral viability, going for broke on North Sea oil and gas is the least important one to give up.

Kemi Badenoch’s plan to extract every last hydrocarbon from UK waters would not raise this country’s long-term output of oil and gas by more than homeopathic amounts.

And even if it did, it would not move the needle on UK energy prices.

Full story here.

The rest of the article is the usual AEP waffle, and he fails to present any justification at all for his silly rant.

He points out that North Sea reserves are dwindling, but is that any reason at all for not making the best use of what we have got left?

His only real argument is that global demand for oil is slowly declining and that we will end up with stranded assets with a glut of surplus oil. But so what? Even if we did, it would be the oil majors who lose out, not Britain.

In any event, his argument ignores economic logic. If oil prices fall, demand will increase as it becomes cheaper than alternatives. It is the same thing that happens with every economic cycle in raw material markets. Even if Europe and China use less oil, low prices will drive demand in Africa and other third world countries. Indeed it would usher in an economic revolution there.

And even if demand for oil drops as electric cars take hold, what about gas? World consumption of natural gas has increased by 21% in the last ten years and is still increasing. Gas is not tied to transport demand and there is no reason why demand won’t stay strong in years to come.

But apparently AEP wants us to abandon our gas reserves as well.

Needless to say, AEP finishes by singing the praises of offshore wind, which he calls a “fantastic feat of engineering and logistics”, which will turn the UK into a large energy exporter. In what world is wind power that costs twice as much as gas power a sensible option? And why on earth does he think Europe will want to buy such expensive power when it will already have its own, other than at knock down prices?

He gives the game away at the end by moaning that the UK will be throwing away leadership on global climate policy. At £100 billion and counting, I don’t think it is anything sane people would worry about!