On the last day of June, reports emerged that owners of the Prax Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire had filed for insolvency. The news follows the closure of the INEOS Grangemouth refinery last year (and its conversion into an import terminal), putting another and even bigger question mark over Britain’s capacity to sustain its industries. The Prax site provided the UK with 10% of its crude oil-derived products, including Heathrow Airport – which itself suffered a catastrophic loss of power earlier this year, further signalling the state of the country’s infrastructure. In their attempt to understand what happened, however, much of the press is ignoring the Net Zero elephant in the room.
Details about the refinery going into receivership are thin on the ground because the news has only just emerged and the company is privately owned. But to my ears, the loss of petrochemicals plants sounds like an echo of the Net Zero policy agenda. The Labour Party came to power very clearly signalling its intention to destroy what remained of Britain’s domestic oil and gas sector. Leading the party’s green chorus, Ed Miliband promised blob lobbyists that there would be “no new North Sea oil and gas licences” – reversing the preceding government’s last-minute wobbles on the Net Zero agenda. So impressed with the Secretary of State were the Just Stop Oil collective, they cited his policy as the reason for winding down their operations.
Moreover, the domestic oil and gas sector was hit with a windfall tax.
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Britain now imports most of our gas and oil fuels. We import a lot of electricity. We import a lot of our food. We are utterly dependent on foreign countries and logistics to keep us alive.
We borrow money to pay for all this.
Whar was that about energy and food security?
Will we see a desperate struggle to keep this refinery open, using taxpayer funds of course.
Someone needs to tell 2-Tier that if you are planning for war you shouldn’t be simultaneously shutting down oil refineries, steel plants and your entire energy sector.
Also, seems to me wind farms and solar farms would make very easy targets, if your intention was to cripple the nations energy supply.
The government will have to take responsibility for it as it is a hazardous plant and needs to be shut down safely then handed to the liquidators for disposal. Likely to become a storage depot for imported products.
Fossil fuels are what gave us the standard of living we have. But the global government people think our lifestyles are “unsustainable” and have to be curbed. —-This is basically what the entire climate scam is really about. I see Starmer has just agreed with the UN that more taxes will be imposed on fossil fuels. There is no climate crisis. This is the UN and WEF deciding to lower the standard of living of the wealthy western countries and tragically the Miliband’s and Starmer’s of this world are fully onboard. yet these are the UN lackeys that we keep voting for because most of us think this is all about the climate. —NO IT ISN’T AND IT NEVER WAS FROM THE VERY START
Fossil fuels are what gave us the standard of living we have. But the global government people think our lifestyles are “unsustainable” and have to be curbed.
That’s the story we’re supposed to swallow to accept the much more mundane these people want our money for their own purposes. I think it’s a mistake to accept any of these meta-stories. Only the UN and the WEF know what they really want. We don’t and we don’t need to.
Sorry, but the story we are supposed to swallow is that we face a “climate emergency” and only by making do with LESS of everything and allowing government to control our every activity can we survive. ——-Most ordinary people have never heard of “Sustainable Development”, so that is not a story they are fed. But they are fed the climate apocalypse one on a daily basis.
Ehh … the local (closest, actually) Waitrose has posters marketing the “sustainability” of its food and sells “sustainably brewed beer.” The term has been ubiquitous for a long time.
Hit the nail right on the head.
According to the usual sources, this happened a week or so ago, and is in administration, albeit still operational. Delving into it, it’s obvious why Westminster don’t want it to shut down, if you note where a lot of it’s output goes via a pipeline.
All in the ‘managed decline’ planned for the UK by the WEF.
Increasingly hard to believe otherwise.
Can someone explain the difference between a windfall tax and a gangster walking into a local business and demanding money from the till?
Clue. The answer’s the same as the difference between HMG printing money – sorry, quantative easing – and me printing vast quantities of £20 notes.
HMRC – His Majesty’s Robbing Criminals. (Cleaned that up slightly)
Minus the obvious differences, such as no gangster walking into a local business and demanding money from the till, this special-purpose VAT¹ for oil and gas producers was created by the properly constituted law-making body of the country.
¹ Value-added is a term invented by Marx and describes the difference between the cost of creating a certain product or delivering a certain service and its market value. Taxing this is essentially an income tax for businesses or, correctly worded, a profit tax for businesses. This shouldn’t be called windfall tax because it’s not taxing someone which just fell into someone’s back garden but the effort which was necessary to create something of value other people were willing to pay for.
“Properly constituted law making body”
So basically, a bigger more powerful protection racket/organisation, embellished with pomp and procedure.
It’s no protection racket at all because it’s the legitimate authority for such purposes. What precisely constitutes a legitimate authority is obviously always a bit arbitrary but in this particular case, it’s the parliament of Great Britain (or, more precisely, the crown in parliament).
It’s a protection racket because you can’t opt out of it, no matter what combination of nice words are used to embellish the concept.
It’s not a protection racket because it was instituted by a legitimate authority. That’s the crucial difference here. By living in the UK, you implicitly accept that. Otherwise, you have to move elsewhere because this authority claims this country as the one it has authority over and it’s willing to and capable of making good on this claim by violent means. In particular, this means you don’t get to pick and chose which laws you want to obey and which you prefer to ignore. If you think some law shouldn’t exist or should be somewhat different, there’s a proper procedure to follow to get it changed and until this has happened, it’s binding.
That’s the general problem with land: It’s owned by someone. You can’t just hitch your tents there and claim that – within diameter of, say, 1 mile around them – only your will counts. Or, technically, you can. But then, you’d better be prepared to defend the territory you claim to have conquered from the government of the United Kingdom against any means it could possibly employ to recover it, including dropping a nuke your head or running you over with a tank.
^^
should have been pitch your tents
The last person who leaves Britain will not have to turn off the lights, as there will be none to turn off.
Muslims don’t need lights or electricity. Sex slaves, camels, urine, and halal will do.
A downtick ! I wonder 🤔
“Don’t you understand? The more refineries my idiotic energy policies close, the greater Britain’s energy security will be. Have a nice day” Edward Miliband
It’s time an enterprising reporter closely (but not openly) followed Miliband for a day or two, monitoring his every use of anything to do with oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Shower gel, hot water, cooked breakfast, mobile phone, clothing containing artificial fibres, chauffeur driven petrol car, diesel train, laundry detergent, flight, lights left on in buildings…etc
I’m confident that the entertainment industry can turn such hard info into something toe-curlingly embarrassing, for our prime time amusement
No I don’t think so, I think accusations of hypocrisy are like water off a duck’s back to these people, and in fact their self concious hypocrisy is part of the buzz of being an enormously important powerful person.
It’s part of the pleasure of rubbing our noses in it.
There’ no point trying to judge these psychopaths by the standards we would use for ourselves.
Have pity on the reporter who would have to get that close to Edbad the Mad.
Would the cooked breakfast include bacon? He apparently struggles with the concept of bacon, particularly in a sandwich!
Economic sabotage, on a vast scale.
Pure and simple.
Deliberately though. —–Our bought and paid for Politicians carry out the wishes of the UN and WEF
He’s a Chunt !!!….