Both Labour and the Tories have let ideology cloud judgment to the detriment of taxpayers
Richard Tice
15 August 2025
Daily Telegraph
Britain is today less energy secure than ever before.
UK energy production has declined by 67pc over the past two decades. That means we have gone from a position of being a net exporter of energy, creating jobs and tax in this country to importing around half of our energy.
British bill-payers are creating jobs and tax revenue in other countries instead.
Last year marked a record low for UK energy production – despite there being decades worth of oil and gas left in the country and the Government dishing out billions in subsidies to wind and solar developers.
How has this been allowed to happen?
The answer is simple: policies from Labour and Conservative governments have been driven by the ideological pursuit of net zero to the detriment of energy security and ordinary taxpayers.
Policies like the Energy Profits Levy, also known as the windfall tax, have driven investors away from Britain and towards friendlier environments in the US, Brazil and Norway.
Government policy over several decades has deterred the industry from investing in this country and so has widened the gap between our energy demand and production.
Our natural gas import dependency is 50pc and by 2030 it is forecast to be 70pc or more. UK oil production has declined by 42pc and our gas production is down by 21pc since 2019.
Things are getting far worse.
The bureaucrats in Whitehall have decided that it is preferable to shut down domestic production and rely on foreign imports, assuming that this will inspire other countries to take stronger action on climate.
Would it make sense as a country for us to get rid of the British Army in the hope of inspiring world peace? Of course not. It simply makes no sense not to utilise what we have in this country.
The rest of the world isn’t listening to UK politicians’ moralistic crowing about decarbonisation either. From 1990 to 2024, the UK’s emissions declined by 50pc, while globally emissions have increased by more than 60pc.
We are now in a bizarre position where we shut down UK oil and gas fields and then import billions of pounds worth of liquefied shale gas from the US.
Britain’s oil and gas industry has been the beating heart of our national security for decades.
You don’t need to look far to find case studies demonstrating the perilous position that Ed Miliband and the Tories have put this vital sector in.
Harbour Energy has cut jobs, Apache has said it will quit the North Sea by 2030 and Chevron has headed for the door as well.
A recent High Court judgment exemplifies the issue this country faces – where the policy and legal environment work against the UK’s national interest.
The Gryphon is a floating production vessel in the North Sea which processes 1pc to 2pc of UK oil production and up to 1pc of UK gas production. The vessel was certified for safe production until the end of 2027, and the five fields which feed it have around nine million barrels of oil and gas remaining.
The value of this oil and gas is around $300m (£221m), which if produced would have delivered £150m in tax to HMRC. The vessel employs hundreds of people and is a key part of our energy security.
The French-owned operator, TotalEnergies, with the blessing of the oil and gas regulator, decided that they wanted to decommission the vessel – despite there being millions of barrels of oil reserves around the site.
Nobel Upstream, one of the field’s joint venture partners, took the regulator to court.
As of this week, a judge in the High Court concluded that the volume of oil and gas remaining was “relatively modest” and that the regulator reflected the “materiality of net zero” in its decision making.
These fields will now be shut off permanently, leaving tax revenue and opportunities for workers stranded under the sea.
How many other fields which could generate £150m in tax and secure 200 jobs are now at risk from High Court decisions.
I hope that Nobel Upstream appeals this illogical High Court decision, but Reform UK’s response would be very simple: if oil or gas would be economically viable to extract, it will be extracted.
Reform UK has already met with British oil and gas firms to tell them to get applications ready for a Reform UK victory at the next general election.
We will grant these applications on an urgent basis.
Richard Tice is a Reform MP for Boston and Skegness and the party’s energy spokesman
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