Letters

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is absolutely right when she says we must continue to drill for oil in the North Sea. Modern civilisation depends on oil and gas production.

Marine gas oil for all the ships at sea – container ships, warships, fishing boats, dredgers, tankers, crude carriers, ferries. Diesel fuel for the excavators which mine rare earths for EVS or dig out the foundations for wind farms, buildings or airports. Avgas for holiday jets, cargo planes, fighter aircraft, air ambulances. Millions of gallons of gear oil for the UK’S 13,000 windmills. Plastics to manufacture mobile phones, car parts, surgeons’ gowns and visors, TVS and computers, surfboards and dinghies. Gas for propane bottles, industrial use, fire extinguishers and air conditioning units. Oil and gas derivatives for pharmaceuticals of all kinds.

And given the financial crisis which faces the UK economy, with interest payments on debt at a staggering £100 billion a year, it makes sense to boost economic activity in every way possible, and therefore tax receipts. The more firms drilling for oil in offshore waters the bigger the Treasury’s tax take.

In addition, misguided people like Ed Miliband also want British coal to remain in the ground, and praise the refusal of planning permission for a new coalmine. But coal is needed to manufacture pristine steel, so if we want to continue to produce fine steel in Britain we need coking coal, as we do for quality cement production. Surely it makes more sense to mine it here than import it via Immingham?

Instead of virtue signalling, and pretending we can control the climate of this complex planet, what is required is maximising all the treasure under our feet here onshore, and extracting as much as possible from the continental shelf. We need an energy abundance, not scarcity. To prepare for climate change we need energy – as much as we can get.

William Loneskie Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire