“What we want to see is the licenses for Jackdaw and Rosebank lifted so that they can start drilling. There’s a pipeline ready there.” That was Kemi Badenoch’s answer when the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked how opening up the North Sea would help households.
The Conservative leader used the Sunday interview to tell Labour it must ditch Ed Miliband’s “silly” green ideology and push ahead with new oil and gas fields. She argued the move would help struggling Britons pay their bills. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz had sent oil prices up around the world, and the Tories pitched drilling as their answer to the energy price spike driven by the war in the Middle East.
The numbers, and the pushback
Kuenssberg pressed her on what consumers would actually gain. Badenoch cited about £25 billion over 10 years from drilling, and said £2.5 billion of that could go toward lowering household bills, with “various figures up to £80” mentioned. Tax receipts and profits from drilling, she said, could be used to subsidise bills.
The presenter pointed out that the Tories’ own shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, had said the plan “wouldn’t necessarily save very much money.”
“Directly, directly,” Badenoch admitted. “But indirectly, yes, it does, because you can use the money from there to subsidise.”
Kuenssberg tried again. Wasn’t the party presenting drilling as a solution while conceding it might not help people directly? Badenoch said it “requires the Government to make the link.” The drilling would not go straight onto bills, she said. But she pointed to imports, saying 40% of the country’s imports come from Norway, which is drilling in the same basin. She said bills could see taxes scrapped “today”, with money from North Sea drilling used to replace that income.
“I’m not saying that once you drill oil and gas in the North Sea, it’s gonna go straight onto your bills. No one has said that, but it is all related,” she said. “And pretending that it is not related is very dishonest from a Government that has a terrible energy policy.”
Jobs and security
Badenoch claimed the North Sea oil and gas industry is “losing about 1000 jobs a month”, which she called “very bad for Scotland in particular.” Drilling, she said, was something Britain needed to do “for our energy security, financial security, as well. That’s how you get national security.”
She was due to formally launch the party’s “Get Britain Drilling” campaign the next day during a visit to an Aberdeen oil rig, where she planned to call on Britain to make the most of its oil and gas reserves.
