Damien Cosgrove, Kent and east Sussex Socialist Party
Andy Burnham’s new Labour government has announced a complete U-turn on the 2024 manifesto pledge to not approve any new licensing to drill for oil and gas in Britain by giving approval to the Adura-owned Rosebank oilfield.
Burnham has consistently underpinned his more popular policies, such as the national care service or reversing the decades of attacks by neoliberalism, with the caveat that he cannot go beyond the mandate set by the 2024 general election. This means sticking to the ‘fiscal rules’ which necessitate cuts to keep the bond markets and bosses happy. The popular things he says he’s in favour of must wait until 2029.
Labour has broken with its manifesto pledges not to rise to the challenge of the energy crisis, social care crisis or the major attacks on working-class living standards but instead to grant new drilling licences to oil giants. The justification for this licence, which the government’s own analysis states will cause £16.1 billion in global damage and over 8,000 heat-related deaths, is on the basis of improving our energy security and creating new jobs.
Of course for us it is crucial that we defend and fight for all jobs, but Adura’s own estimates predict just 27 new full-time jobs will be created from drilling at Rosebank.
And for the claims new drilling will improve our lives, there is not a single piece of evidence suggesting the expansion of drilling into Rosebank will cut a single penny off of the steeply rising cost for electricity and gas. The main beneficiaries of this arrangement are the oil barons Shell and Equinor who own Adura and made a combined £23 billion in profit last year.
Capitalist catastrophe
The energy crisis we find ourselves in is a result of the multiple crises of capitalism: the climate crisis and the overdependence on fossil fuels, distribution of essentials being driven by profit and not need, and the need for capitalist companies to maximise profits.
An act that would improve energy security and create stable well-paid jobs would be nationalising the energy companies without compensation to the wealthy, only to those with proven need. And democratically run the system based on need and not endless profit. In public ownership, planned investment could be used to transition our grid from polluting fossil fuels to green energy, in the process creating sustainable jobs for workers. Crucially every worker currently working in the fossil fuel industry should be offered retraining, with wages and conditions guaranteed to be better than they are now.
