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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

EXCLUSIVE: Home Office fears new record for Channel crossings this summer amid intelligence on 200+ planned trips. The Home Office is increasingly concerned that this summer could see a new high in illegal small-boat crossings of the English Channel, with internal estimates pointing to between 15,000 and 18,000 arrivals if favourable weather conditions persist. A senior Home Office source has told me that the department is bracing for a significant surge as warmer weather arrives, potentially driving crossings to levels not seen in recent years. The source warned: "The department is concerned that this summer we could see crossings of up to 18,000. Intelligence suggests there are around 200 planned trips in the pipeline." This comes despite a recent lull in activity. Official Home Office data shows no small-boat arrivals over the past seven days in mid-March a relatively quiet period following a spell of daily crossings earlier this month. However, government intelligence indicates that smugglers are preparing for an uptick, with more than 200 potential crossings being monitored as hot weather is expected to create calmer conditions ideal for the journeys. The figures would represent a substantial increase on recent seasonal patterns and could push annual totals higher still, following 2025’s total of over 41,000 arrivals the second-highest year on record. The Home Office has not responded to a request for comment on this story.

“A wake up call” the CEO of Britain’s biggest domestic energy firm told me last night about the possibility of long term impact to global gas and oil infrastructure… but he pointed to electrification as the main lesson, while domestic gas would be preferable to shipped gas:

“wake-up call that gets us to electrify more of our economy and get more of our energy from homegrown sources.”


"The irony is, right now, we're emailing millions of customers saying their energy prices are going to fall..."
"You can't protect yourself against these global markets forever."
 "Traders are really worried about how long it's going to take these facilities to get back online."
"Our electricity system's too inefficient. We need to reform that markets so that people get the benefits of our homegrown resources."
“my own view is that shipping gas around the world is more inefficient and has more leaks of methane than if you use local gas. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. North Sea gas wouldn't meaningfully bring the price down because we're paying the global price. If we got more out of the North Sea, it would simply be sold to other countries at these very high prices or here at these high prices. And we can't kid ourselves we're going to be self-sufficient in gas again. What we can do is have a much cheaper approach to electricity than we have today. Our electricity system's too inefficient. We need to reform that markets so that people get the benefits of our homegrown resources.