When is a licence not a licence? When it’s a new licence that is an old licence. After months of faffing around – there were the small matters of a party conference and a byelection to negotiate first – the government finally gave the go-ahead to drilling in the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea. What swung it wasn’t so much the irresistible excitement of creating 27 new jobs and securing 2% of the UK’s gas supply for the next 10 years, it was the politics. If other countries were going to carry on drilling then we might as well do so, too.
There would still be the same amount of greenhouse gases created and we wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else for our gas supply. Though we would for the other 98%. Small steps and all that. At a time of global insecurity and rising energy costs, it was time to drill, baby, drill. So the inconvenience of a Labour manifesto that promised no new North Sea licences could be rethought. It was now merely re-allowing a licence that had already been granted and then deemed unlawful by the courts. AKA dancing on the head of the pin.
