Merryn Somerset Webb

The oil market has fragmented: Oil is now trading for $150/bbl in Asia (except the occasional sanctioned Iranian tanker) where demand destruction has started. China and India most pressured. Meanwhile it is still $100 in the US

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 A reminder that 55% of Scots pay less tax than people in the rest of the UK. 🔊👇 Those who pay slightly more benefit from a far better social contract:

Iran’s strike last night on the Ras Laffan facility in Qatar is a significant escalation. It risks a prolonged supply crunch on the global LNG market. Yet here at home, the Chancellor says all countries must play their part in boosting oil and gas production - while her own Energy Secretary bans new drilling in the North Sea. Ed Miliband’s position is untenable. Those desperate to shut down our own industry will say it takes too long to get our own wells up and running. They argue it won’t make a difference to the current crisis. This is bogus. By autumn, Jackdaw could be producing enough gas to heat 1.6 million homes. All of it will go into our pipes. The approval has been sat on Ed Miliband’s desk for months. If the conflict is not resolved, we will be in for difficult times. Turning our backs on the tax revenue and extra supply from the North Sea is inexcusable. However, so too is Ed Miliband’s other mistake. He has spent the last two years making electricity expensive, when he should have been making it cheaper. If you want people to use electricity to heat their homes or drive their cars, we need to address the biggest problem we have - our electricity is too expensive. Our Cheap Power plan could have been adopted by the Government by now to cut everyone’s electricity bills by 20%. Expensive electricity has stopped consumers from adopting technology which gives them options in energy price spikes. We also need to cherish our industrial power. The crippling Carbon Taxes - which have doubled because of Labour’s policies - mean we lost a third of our refineries last year alone. That makes us more reliant on imports at the worst moment. In the longer term, renewables tie us to gas as we always need flexible power that we can ramp up when the wind stops blowing. Yet Labour’s plan means that gas power gets four times more expensive. The Government must reinstate my plans for a third large-scale nuclear plant. That’s why our Energy Resilience Strategy is as follows: BACK THE NORTH SEA MAKE ELECTRICITY CHEAP STOP IMPOSING CRIPPLING CARBON TAXES ON INDUSTRY DOUBLE DOWN ON NUCLEAR

House of Lords doing the right thing. Thank Goodness.

Our report on the looming 'pension shock' facing Gen X is out today. This is one area where my generation will have it worse than those that follow. For most of our working lives, we did not have 'auto enrolment' and as a result our pension pots are smaller.