A proposed law on “energy independence” from the Labour government in the United Kingdom would make the country’s temporary ban on drilling in new oil and gas fields permanent.
This emerges from a detailed memorandum from the civil service to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, which was cited in The Telegraph on Wednesday.
The Starmer government introduced a temporary ban on exploration for new oil and gas in autumn 2025, but by enshrining it permanently in law, it becomes more complicated for future governments to repeal it, writes the English newspaper’s energy editor, Jonathan Leake.
The timing is nevertheless controversial because the war in Iran has cut fuel supplies from the Middle East and created a global oil crisis. Prominent business leaders, including the heads of British Gas and Octopus Energy, have therefore urged Miliband to reconsider his North Sea policy.
Ed Miliband’s apparatus – he is a fervent advocate of net zero whose official title is “Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero” – also plans to prohibit onshore gas production through fracking, a technique that has for several years been used on a large scale in the United States.
The minister receives praise from climate activists, but is criticised by the Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho, who believes that such legislation entails “a deliberate destruction of our own domestic energy supplies and people’s livelihoods”.
Within the British energy industry, the appetite for extracting more oil and gas is considerable:
The fate of the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields – two significant oil and gas projects in the North Sea that the energy secretary has yet to approve – nevertheless remains uncertain.
Miliband is, however, among those who believe in a rapid transition to “renewable” energy as the best path towards energy independence.
The British government’s energy policy thus differs markedly from the Norwegian one, despite the fact that they originate from politically aligned parties and are both committed to the net zero agenda, at least verbally.
The Støre government recently decided to reopen three gas fields in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea that had been shut down in 1998. And among the most important export markets for Norwegian gas is precisely the United Kingdom.