I'm not saying that the Labour party is rapidy dematerialising up Corbyn's posterior but...
“…it isn’t fair to heap the cost of the climate emergency
onto the nurse, the builder or the energy worker” so under Labour “the big oil
and gas corporations that profit from heating up our planet will shoulder the burden
and pay their fair share” so says Jeremy Corbyn in his defence of the £11bn windfall
tax he is intending to impose on the UK oil industry.
Because, of course, the nurses, builders and
energy workers are not responsible for energy consumption – it is entirely the
fault of the upstream industry. It is
those who do the dirty work who do not have lilly white carbon free hands.
“North Sea oil and gas production has been hugely profitable
for UK continental shelf oil and gas companies which, between 1997 and 2018,
made a net operating surplus of £273 billion” says the party. Perhaps but what’s past is the past. If the government wanted to tax the industry
during the boom years then it should have done it then when the money
existed. Since the OPEC price war of
2015 the price of oil has halved and the industry is only worth £5bn. When I point this out people just say that “Labour’s
policies are costed”. But £5bn - £11bn =
-£6bn … so they are written down but that doesn’t mean that they are costed …if
they were costed that equation would come out at =£0.
Also the £273bn quoted is the production surplus for 19
years making the yearly figure £14bn … even £14bn -£11bn = £2bn so in a poor
year the industry would go into the negative … When you need a Tardis to
implement your tax policies it’s time to give up…
Still, it’s this nonsense or the Tories taking the £ off a
cliff with their Hard Brexit plans.
Choices choices.
The longer I’ve been round the oil industry the more I’ve
come to realise that there is only one eternal truth. Oil wealth never made anybody happy…
I saw a documentary the other day about plastic waste ending
up at the bottom of the ocean and began to wonder if future geologists will
talk about “the plastic layer”. “This
was formed 5,000,000 years ago when a species called homo sapiens dug up the
oil and turned it into long polymer chains and threw it back into the sea.”
Interestingly in the Labour manifesto there’s also a
commitment to build more nuclear power stations to bridge the energy gap. Mind that elephant in the room…
Corby says that “the next Labour government will create a
Just Transition Fund, paid for by a new windfall tax on these corporations. The
Fund will, in particular, provide an expected £11 billion support package for
nearly 37,000 oil and gas workers, the 126,000 people in jobs dependent on the
sector and their communities to make the transition to a clean economy.” The problem is that the £11b is going to be
taken from the oil industry to give the money back to oil industry workers
which seems something of a positive feedback loop. Tax our jobs to create us new jobs. Except that tax alone cannot create jobs… so
how would this even work?
“The size and precise scheme of the tax to pay for the Fund
will be determined after consultation and a comprehensive assessment of what is
necessary.”
Says the manifestio … but we know it must equal at least
£11bn because that’s stated earlier. So
how will it work.
“The tax will have no effect on prices for consumers at the
pump as oil prices are determined by a global market.”
So we’re just going to tax the ailing UK oil industry and
buy in our oil from abroad? Also while
you can source oil from elsewhere it’s not as easy to source gas from elsewhere
…it’s most economical to burn it close to where it was drilled since by the
nature of gas being gas it’s not easy to store…
Sigh… Oh well they did ask me if I would help write the manifesto and I said "no, busy".
More fool me.
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