Britain is living in a net zero fantasy land

It would be the biggest new oilfield in decades. It could supply as much as 2 per cent of all the oil needed by the United States. And it would be large enough by itself to make a significant difference to the global price, dealing yet another blow to Putin’s collapsing war machine in Ukraine. Over the next couple of weeks, Joe Biden is expected to approve the Willow Project, a vast new fossil-fuel development in Alaska. He has decided that the US, and indeed the world, still needs oil.

In the US, unlike most of Europe, the debate about energy still has some vague connection to reality. It recognises that it will take a while and cost a lot to switch to renewables. In the meantime, you will need oil and gas – and you might as well produce it yourself rather than buy it from Saudi Arabia. Biden is not ignoring climate change or in hock to the oil industry. He is spending so much on putting the US at the forefront of the shift to green energy that every other country in the world is complaining about the support he is offering. From subsidies for electric vehicles to investment in wind and solar power, he is spending hundreds of billions to hit net zero as quickly as any other country. On any measure you care to look at, the Biden White House takes this stuff seriously.

And yet, despite that, he is about to approve the biggest new oilfield in years. Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day. It will add an extra third to Alaska’s annual production. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry from environmentalists, with opposition petitions attracting more than 2.5 million signatures. The president is poised to ignore all that. Drilling could start before the end of the year.

If the Left-leaning, climate-friendly Biden can approve new energy projects, why can’t we do the same in the UK? It is about being realistic. Renewable energy capacity takes a long time to build, and it will be years before we can switch heating systems and cars to electricity. In the meantime, we will still need oil and gas. In Washington, that is just obvious. In London, unfortunately, it still isn’t.

The UK ought to get over its boneheaded opposition to new energy production. In the North Sea, producers have been harassed and taxed out of existence. Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government did everything in its power to stop new licences being approved, even though it is one of the country’s most important industries. Windfall taxes have been slapped on the sector. When energy giants announce bumper profits, they are vilified, and face calls for even stiffer levies. In response, projects have been put on hold, and investment stalled. Shell said last year it was “reviewing” (corporate speak for scrapping) the money spent in the North Sea, and so has Norway’s Equinor. We can hardly complain if output is falling.

The record on fracking has been even worse. Even though it enabled the US to be independent in energy, in this country it has been effectively banned, despite the fact that we have vast reserves of shale oil and gas in the North. Liz Truss’s doomed government briefly tried to revive it, but was shot down in a hail of opposition. The result? The UK has a huge deficit in energy, importing £2 billion more a month in oil alone than we export. That is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any difference to the environment whether the oil is extracted in this country or somewhere else. Nor does running down oil capacity do anything to speed up green technology. It just puts us at risk of shortages when supply is tight.

Biden at least has the guts to realise we will still need oil for a while longer, and it might as well be American oil instead of anyone else’s. It is time we took a lesson from Washington and approved some new energy projects in this country as well.

If even climatefriendly Biden can approve a massive new oil field, why can’t the UK?

It doesn’t make any difference to the environment whether the oil is extracted in this country or somewhere else