By Michiel Willems
Jacob Rees-Mogg has said “we need to be extracting as much as we possibly can from our North Sea oil fields”.
The Cabinet Office minister was asked on the BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme whether the extraordinary profits that energy companies have made should be redistributed given the pain many households are feeling on energy.
Mr Rees-Mogg replied: “I think what we need to be doing is getting more gas out of the ground, we need to be extracting as much as we possibly can from our North Sea oil fields.
“And we need to extract shale gas from the United Kingdom because if you have a strong domestic market you are less affected by the international price, which has been the experience of the United States, and you also increase energy security.
“If that is going to happen, it’s going to need investment by the energy companies, and investment is going to be much less likely if you apply retrospective taxes to them.”
On energy companies restarting dividends, he said: “Dividends go to the people in the companies who are individuals or their representative pension funds, so I think hostility to dividends is not a wise economic policy.”
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