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 the supply of cost-effective oil rather than trying to block new extraction. [emphasis, links added]
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 stops blocking new oil drilling.
Praising the U.S.-UK trade deal minted earlier this month, Trump stated:
“I strongly recommend to them, however, that 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 decarbonize.
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 that the green transition is free from fickle foreign interference.
The United States has turned itself from an energy importer to an energy exporter [recently] through the exploitation of shale gas.
The United Kingdom also has these resources under its national territory, but is so ideologically opposed to running its energy grid on natural gas that it recently filled the few test wells that had been sunk with cement.
Read more at Breitbart
