It’s time for Britain to draw on its own resources, urge MPs

BRITAIN should reconsider its ban on fracking to help end the nation’s reliance on foreign energy imports, MPs said yesterday.

They also called for the Government to exploit hundreds of oil and gas wells in the North Sea.

There is the equivalent of between ten and 20billion barrels of oil under the sea, according to government figures, enough to cover a significant proportion of the UK’s energy needs for two or three decades.

The Government halted fracking – fracturing shale rock to release trapped oil and gas – in England in November 2019 after confrontations between shale gas companies and local communities. Critics say it causes earth tremors.

Yesterday a Tory former energy minister led calls for the Government to look again at the issue. Sir John Hayes said fracking had ‘insulated’ America and suggested it could do the same for Britain if carried out safely. He said renewable energy was ‘not of itself enough’.