U.S. President Donald Trump offers friendly advice to Britain, suggesting the country’s astronomical energy bills might come tumbling down if the government increases supply of cost-effective oil rather than trying to block new extraction.
Consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom pay some of the highest energy prices in the world, but that need not be the case if the country ditches its dash for renewables and stop blocking new oil drilling.
Praising the U.S.-UK trade deal minted earlier this month, Trump stated: “I strongly recommend to them, however, that in order to get their Energy Costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills, and incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea”.
There are “large amounts of oil… waiting to be taken”, the President said in a statement, noting the UK’s “old fashioned tax system disincentivizes drilling”.
Unleashing new sources of energy would see Britain’s energy prices go “[way down], and fast”, he said.
The British government has adopted an argument around energy that there is a clear choice between dependency on imports of foreign-extracted fossil fuels traded on volatile markets, or the sunlit uplands of the push to decarbonise. Naturally, things are not so neatly packaged in reality: as observed by President Trump there is a bountiful energy in Britain’s territorial waters, and Chinese dominance in the solar panel market doesn’t lend credence to the idea the green transition is free from fickle foreign interference.
The United States has turned itself from an energy importer to an energy exporter in recently memory through the exploitation of shale gas. The United Kingdom also has these resources under its national territory, but is so ideologically opposed to keeping the energy grid running on gas it recently filled the few test wells that had been sunk with cement.
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