BP’s decision to quit North Sea oil exploration and production after six decades is testament to the betrayal of Britain’s energy security by successive governments.
No company is more associated with British oil and gas extraction, refining and the nation’s forecourts than what used to be called British Petroleum.
Yet the UK’s mad dash for ‘green’ energy and the Treasury’s constant chopping and changing of taxes on oil giants has seen two of the nation’s biggest beasts, Shell and BP, quit the region in the past two years.
Ill-conceived government policies are similarly destroying Aberdeen as one of the great centres of energy engineering and threaten the very future of BP as a standalone company listed on the London market.
Ed Miliband may have been moved from the Department of Energy to the Foreign Office but his reign of terror against fossil-fuel producers must be regarded as one of the greatest examples of industrial sabotage in British history. He has been aided and abetted by a compliant Treasury which allowed headline taxation of oil and gas income from British waters to soar to an eye-popping 78 per cent, with this preposterously high rate built into the Government’s fiscal plans until 2030.
