Labour donor and green energy tycoon Dale Vince has performed a dramatic U-turn and told Andy Burnham that approving new North Sea oil and gas drilling could actually “save money for the country”. The Mail has the story:
The green energy tycoon revealed he has dropped his opposition to the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields and said there is “a way that we can make sense of this North Sea puzzle”.
Explaining his surprise U-turn, Mr Vince said that if new drilling was combined with “price control” on wholesale energy then this would help bring bills down. …
Rosebank is the UK’s largest remaining untapped oil field and lies about 80 miles west of Shetland.
Meanwhile there have been warnings of fuel shortages this winter without the approval of the Jackdaw gas field, which is 150 miles east of Aberdeen.
Mr Vince, who has donated more than £6 million to Labour through his Ecotricity firm, once said it would be a “betrayal of millions of us” to approve the two sites.
But, speaking to BBC Newsnight on Monday, the 64 year-old – who previously advised Mr Burnham when he was Greater Manchester Mayor – explained why he had now reversed his position.
“I have a different position perhaps than the one you expect me to have,” Mr Vince said.
“There’s a way that we can make sense of this North Sea puzzle. We can actually bring our bills down, which we can’t at the moment unless we do this one thing, which is price control the North Sea.
“At the moment, the global market sets the price, and it doesn’t matter how much we make here, we pay the global price.
“If we price control it like we have our retail energy sector, we can actually save money and that makes more sense of the North Sea and it would make more sense of Jackdaw and Rosebank.”
He added: “If we price control wholesale energy across the board, like we have retail, we have to do this to reform our energy system.
“If we do that, we pave the way to make sense of Rosebank and Jackdaw new drilling. Sites that are already licensed, because we can save money.
“And then this secondary argument that’s being made for new drilling, that if we’re gonna use fossil fuels, we might as well make them here as to bring them from abroad.
“That makes more sense and comes to the fore. We will use fossil fuels for a number of years to come, and it makes sense to make them, if we can also save money here and create some jobs. I’m up for it.”
Worth reading in full.
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If he has had a change of heart, there must be something not being said here. I am not smart enough to see what it is. But it must be something that makes him money.
Is he aiming to buy the cheap oil and gas and sell it to us with a huge markup?
He may have realised that using local gas and oil saves the CO2 caused by importing LNG and oil.
So looks like it’s Dale who really decides the Labour Gov policy.
Glad we’ve had that confirmed.
Why is his opinion given any value? What has he done that warrents giving him airtime?
Is it me, or is this just another one of those cases where the human in the person finally starts to show?
He’s into his 60’s now, so the final day of judgement is on its way. He’s made his money. He’s now desperately trying to wipe his slate.
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The only price control we need is to stop giving taxpayers money in subsidies to Dale Vince and let the market price in the true cost of net zero. Cheeky Dale then subsidises Labour with our money with huge donations.
Feathering their own nest is tantamount to fraud by the back door. The Parliamentary Standards Committee should be investigating – as they are doing with Farage – otherwise they are hypocrites (but we already know that of course).
What’s his business play here??
“a way that we can make sense of this North Sea puzzle”. It’s not a puzzle. Its better to extract our own oil and gas than buy it from someone else. Like Norway for example, extracting it from the same field.
What a jodrell banker.
Grifters gotta grift
Price controls! Dear me – the man is a loony.
Never, ever, anywhere have price controls been anything but a disaster. In any case the wholesale electricity market is price controlled, with multiple interventions by Government. This plus price controlled on the retail market = surplus wind and solar costing £billions in subsidies and constraint payments, retail outfits going bankrupt and supply shortage with rolling blackouts threatened.
Government has caused all this. How any sane individual can think more Government is the solution, beggars belief.
How to get energy prices down: get rid of the carbon tax, build more gas and coal power stations, let wind and solar compete in a free wholesale market, ie no more subsidies and guaranteed prices, or making gas/nuclear leave the grid so wind and solar can join – weather permitting. Of course all the wind and solar outfits would go belly up.
Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell both characterized price controls as a classic, repeatedly failed government intervention that distorts markets, creates shortages or surpluses, and fails to address underlying economic realities—while often eroding freedom and efficiency.
Friedman emphasized that economists “know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages.”… Read more »
Call me a cynic if you like, but when I first learnt about this man’s ‘change of heart’ I assumed that he’d taken a punt on some North Sea oil and gas interests that are being sold off on the cheap.
Not long to the Party conference season.
Supports drilling for oil. Also supports nett zero. His thinking lacks clarity.
Supports Palestinians. He’s a grifter, subsidy harvester.
Yes but he wears a tea towel so his virtue is well and truly signalled.
The cost of energy is not set by government price controls. If the government requires producers to sell at a loss they will either stop production or more likely move operations to Norway. If the government declares it will make up the difference for the producers then the price will go up; if the money has to pass through the tax process and then be paid out to energy producers there will be a significant overhead.
Price controls are a lose-lose option.
If the price at which a producer must sell output which is below market rate – the point if doing it – whilst his income is fixed, his costs are not.
If wholesale prices for electricity are fixed, then the producers’ costs must also be fixed. How, since Government can have no control over external costs?
Your question in your second paragraph can be resolved by assuming Government wants to drive producers out of business.
They also need to abolish the “Fossil fuel” windfall tax, and the Carbon levy, or whatever its currently called on natural gas.
While they’re at it, open up some productive coal mines and commission a number of clean burn coal power stations, and build more gas stations – and keep them online, and not as expensive backup.
Use what we have, and yes, make them as clean burning, unpolluting and efficient as possible – but Carbon Capture – that’s just total BS.