Want cheaper fuel? It's time Britain held a referendum on North Sea oil

Never during the uninterrupted 31-year/1,580-issue non-stop run of this weekly opinion column have I called for a car/motoring-related referendum. Until now. Apologies for stating the obvious, but a car, van or truck is kind of important if you’re one of the 42 million people holding a UK driving licence. With a bit of TLC, routine servicing and MoTs, our much-loved vehicles largely take care of themselves. Unlock, drive, park, lock, repeat pretty much sums up the ownership experience, right?

But, in turn, ‘progress’ also means that buying the fuels for those motors can be an increasingly complex, inconvenient, painful and soul-destroying exercise. Examples: after the demonisation of diesel, it has, for some haters, become an almost taboo fuel. Never mind that it enables HGVs to haul food and other essentials... or high-mileage ambulances to transport patients. 

While almost running on empty recently and trying to purchase petrol, I was forced to queue for what seemed like forever. The last time I drove a hydrogen car in the UK, it had to be trailered home to be refuelled. LPG pumps that were widely promoted and working well on forecourts in my area have all but disappeared. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve arrived at a public charging unit that has left me bereft of the electricity needed for the electric vehicles I’ve been driving…  

Via this column two weeks ago, I argued that the war and resulting fuel and shipping crisis in the Middle East mean that Britain must now safely harvest, secure, use or store as much energy for our needs as it possibly can from as many local sources as possible. That means feeding local wind, solar and tidal power into the grid, plus drilling for more oil and oil-related products from the parts of the North Sea that belong to us. 

A bunch of organisations – including the GMB union, Octopus Energy, Centrica and even RenewableUK – agree with me, as do politicians including Tony Blair, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch. They, like me and countless others – such as PM Keir Starmer, I suspect, after his telling words in Parliament last week – aren’t as obsessed with renewables as Britain’s Energy Security Secretary, Ed Miliband. Unlike him, we see a place in the short and long term for local renewables plus more locally sourced oil and gas. 

This has nothing to do with trying to reduce the prices of fuel. Instead, it’s to do with self-reliance, creating more jobs for UK workers, guaranteeing more reliable and secure supplies for Britain, not importing our energy supplies by pipelines from Scandinavia or polluting ships from the Middle East or North America. Thus the urgent need for a referendum in which we are invited to say, yes or no, should there be more drilling at existing and new oil and gas fields in our North Sea? Can I rely on your vote?  

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