𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Britain is facing a crisis, and we are sleepwalking into it.

For decades, our refineries have distilled crude oil and produced the petrol, fuel and other oil-based products we need to keep this country running.

Faced with rising costs, growing red tape, burdensome regulations, and more and more taxes, one by one these refineries have been shuttered.

This is not just a loss of jobs or capacity; it’s also a loss of our national energy security.

In the wake of the Iran conflict, petrol prices have spiked, energy bills are set to rise, and there are reports of jet fuel shortages. Across Europe, thousands of flights are being cancelled due to a lack of supply.

Worse still, this Labour government have created an atmosphere so hostile to the oil and gas industry that we have just four refineries left – down from 18 just 50 years ago.

This is economic self-sabotage.

I was in Pembrokeshire on Thursday this week, visiting the Valero refinery. It employs 500 people directly, plus hundreds more through contractors. This refinery contributes £75 million a year to the Welsh economy, and supplies around 14 per cent of Britain’s transport fuels. It processes 270,000 barrels a day and is one of the biggest operations of its kind in Europe.

And it is being made unviable by Labour’s industrial vandalism.

Valero says that the UK Emissions Trading Scheme costs them hundreds of millions of pounds a year. That cost does not exist for many competitors in the United States, the Middle East or Asia. It is a unilateral penalty on British industry.

The refinery workers I met are doing difficult work in a community that lacks enough skilled jobs. As refineries like this close, we lose not just production capacity but skills we will struggle to regain.

The engineers, the technicians, the people who have built careers and knowledge, are being forced out of employment through ideological dogma. This is the consequence of deindustrialisation, and it is a political choice.

In 2025, for the first time since 1964, not a single new oil well was drilled in the British North Sea. Norway, our nearest neighbour and nearest competitor, drilled 49.

The Energy Profits Levy – or ‘Windfall Tax’ – and the ban on new licences in the North Sea are killing thousands of jobs and costing the Exchequer £25 billion in lost tax revenue over the next 10 years. Ed Miliband’s net zero theology is industrial self-harm.

The Conservative Party have an answer to this. We will scrap the carbon tax, including the damaging Emissions Trading Scheme, end the ban on new North Sea licenses, and remove the green levies that are loading costs on British industry.

We will use the tax receipts from new drilling in the North Sea, plus our £47 billion savings plan, to abolish VAT on domestic energy bills and scrap the carbon taxes that are holding back British businesses.

If we don’t change course and Ed Miliband continues to double down on his Net Zero dogma, more industry will be under threat of closure. This will only make life more expensive for everyone across the country and leave us even more exposed to global supply shocks.

The Conservatives are determined to deliver a stronger economy, a stronger country and ensure we get Britain working again.