Drill, Kemi, drill! That’s the latest Tory solution to Britain’s energy crisis. In a speech this week, the Conservative leader will promise an end to Labour’s policy of constraining oil and gas production in the North Sea.

In a preview for the Telegraph, Badenoch makes a compelling point: “We are in the absurd situation where our country is leaving vital resources untapped while neighbours such as Norway extract them from the same seabed.”

The counterarguments are unconvincing. For instance, here’s the Grantham Institute claiming that, if we allow new North Sea production, the UK would “lose its ability to convince other countries to act” on climate change. This would require the likes of China and India to be impressed by Western virtue signalling when, quite obviously, they’re not.

However, Badenoch must be careful not to imply that her policy means lower energy costs for British consumers. That’s because, in the UK, oil prices are determined by global markets (as are natural gas prices since the advent of the LNG tanker trade). The UK produces a small fraction — less than 1% — of the world’s oil and gas supply. So upping our output a bit won’t make much difference.

Indeed, whatever happens in terms of policy, we won’t be upping our output at all. The fact is that North Sea production peaked decades ago. All we can achieve with new oil and gas fields is to slightly slow the rate of decline. In other words, this whole controversy is about whether or not we leave the last dregs in the ground. Either way, it won’t affect our progress towards Net Zero nor, for that matter, the prices at the petrol pump.

But what if we nationalised the oil industry or, at the very least, imposed an export ban? That would be too much market interference for the Tories — but Reform UK might go for it. Nigel Farage could sell it as a policy of British oil for British consumers — except that it wouldn’t work, because we haven’t got a hope of self-sufficiency.

Earlier this year, Offshore Energies UK — the trade body for the North Sea oil and gas industry — commissioned a study to show what a pro-production policy framework might achieve. Under every scenario, production still dwindles away to almost nothing by 2050. The base case is that we’ll produce, in total, the equivalent of 3.3 billion barrels of oil and gas over the next 25 years. The figures for the “high case” and the “no constraints case” are 4.2 billion and 7.5 billion barrels respectively. That’s a useful bump, but nowhere near the predicted British demand for oil and gas over the same period — which is 13 to 15 billion barrels.

As long as we rely on fossil fuels, we will depend on global markets and must therefore accept global prices. Of course, any extra production will still be good for our balance of payments and for Government revenues, but it won’t make heating your home or filling the tank any more affordable.

To achieve domestic abundance, Britain would need a much more promising source of fossil fuels. For instance, if we were to discover and exploit shale gas and shale oil on the same scale as America’s fracking industry, that might make a difference. But, of course, fracking is an onshore activity, and therefore has neighbours.

Is Badenoch brave enough to extend her North Sea policy to England’s green and pleasant land? Defying the environmentalists is one thing; taking on the Nimbys in her own party is quite another.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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