We should invest in reducing oil, not expanding it

The oil and gas sector claims that if it gets more support than we currently give them then the UK could produce half of the 15 billion barrels of oil we’ll need before 2050 with the rest being imported from unstable and unreliable countries like the USA.

A better idea would be to aggressively drive down that demand by investing instead in a Green New Deal that would reduce the heat we need in our homes, remove the need for that heat to be produced by oil and would retire fuel-hungry modes of transport like internal combustion cars in favour of active travel and electrified public transport.

We’re going to need more investment in the future regardless of the choices we make, so we should ensure that we make the choices that improve the planet and our lives and not the ones that result in more subsidies for multinational oil and gas corporations now and then give them a public sector bailout when their assets get stranded because all of their customers decarbonised.

The oil sector’s report does correctly highlight bottlenecks in this transition such as the insufficient rate at which we are upgrading our electricity grid which is why our Common Home Plan called for investment in technologies like district heat networks and public transport to avoid placing more load on an already overloaded grid due to heat pumps and private electric cars.

The report also contains one very revealing line missed by other media sources that must be highlighted and pushed back against. While the authors accept recent court rulings that the oil sector must be held accountable for their “Scope 3” polluting emissions (i.e. the emissions caused when someone else burns the oil they extracted), they are calling for a “pragmatic” approach to this accounting. This should be seen as yet another attempt by the industry to dodge their responsibility to clean up the climate emergency that they caused and any attempt to water down pollution legislation should be resisted.