US energy tsar: UK is strangling North Sea oil

DONALD TRUMP’S energy tsar has criticised British ministers for “strangling” North Sea oil and gas by crippling companies with windfall taxes and drilling bans.

Chris Wright, US energy secretary, took aim at the UK’S approach to net zero, which he said was driving up energy prices and destroying British industry.

Mr Wright spoke out on a visit to Brussels to sign energy deals with EU leaders – a trip that precedes Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK by a few days – and ignored the diplomatic sensitivity that normally precedes such trips. He said: “The UK example is heartbreaking – to see the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution export almost all of its energy-intensive industry, its steel making, its petrochemical making, its aluminium fabrication.”

“Historically there has been a lot of investment but not [producing] a lot of energy.

“Where penetration has gotten high, like in the UK, it’s massively driven up electricity prices, leading to the departure of most energy intensive industries to Asia. I don’t think that’s green. I don’t think that’s a climate policy.”

Mr Wright was formerly the founder and boss of Liberty Energy, a US firm that specialises in fracking – a controversial technique for releasing oil and gas from geological formations that were previously difficult to drill.

Asked what message Mr Trump might have for UK leaders on his visit, Mr Wright said the North Sea had “tremendous” oil and gas reserves.

“A lot of reserves are still left there, but the UK Government, for whatever reason, I struggle to understand, has strangled that energy production and allowed its industry to move overseas. We certainly would counsel otherwise. We in the United States believe in energy abundance.”