In 2025 Britain lost two of its oil refineries in a matter of months. Grangemouth, Scotland's only refinery, stopped refining, with 450 jobs gone. In Lincolnshire the Lindsey refinery, which made around a tenth of the fuel produced in this country, went bust and stopped production in August, taking about 625 jobs with it. A buyer was found for the site. It decided refining there was not viable. So we import. In the 12 months to August this year Britain bought £13.1 billion of refined oil from abroad. And on Wednesday, so the story goes, John Healey means to tax it. The plan is a "carbon charge" on imported petrol, diesel and other refined products, an extension of the carbon border tax that begins in January. The Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is said to be keen. The reasoning offered is that British refineries carry millions of pounds in net-zero costs that their foreign competitors do not, so imported fuel undercuts them, and the fair thing is to charge the imports the same. In other words, the government accepts that the costs it imposes on British refineries make them - and, by extension, us - uncompetitive. It accepts that they are losing to foreign fuel because of those costs. And its answer is to leave every one of those costs exactly where it is, and tie the same weight to every tanker coming into the Humber. No British refinery becomes one penny more competitive by this. As part of Labour's longest-standing design, first put into immortal practice by that laconic colossus Clement Attlee, dooming one British arm of state capacity after another to scrofula and irrelevance, that is precisely the point. These people don't want Grangemouth to reopen, nor for Lindsey to restart. They're certainly not bothered about the money in your pocket, either, given the only thing this new step will channge is the price at the pump, for a country that already pays tax on more than half of every litre, and for a motorist who was promised a fuel duty freeze until the end of December and has no idea what comes after it. The TaxPayers' Alliance called it "a shameless tax raid disguised as environmental policy", which is about as generous as it deserves. This is the Metropolitan class's idea of industrial policy. When a British industry is crippled by the costs the state loads onto it, the state's remedy is to load the same costs onto everyone else, and call the result a level playing field. It is levelling, certainly. Everybody ends up lower. Call it The Labour Way. If you understood that energy is the economy, not merely part of it or the engine under it, you might design a programme like ours that takes the weight off instead. Progress would abolish the Carbon Price Support on day one and strips every environmental and social levy off energy bills within 21 days, with a statutory guarantee bringing industrial electricity from 18 to 20 pence a kilowatt-hour down below 8, so that a refinery, a steelworks or a chemicals plant can compete on price. Then we resume licensing in the North Sea, so that the oil under our own sea is ours to use. And we cut fuel duty permanently to 45 pence a litre, cancel the planned rises, and require a vote in both Houses of Parliament before any Chancellor can raise it again. Healey's refinery workers have already been paid off. His tax will be passed onto the working man, like it always is; the loser in this scheme is the van driver in Grimsby, filling up with imported diesel because the refinery up the road is shut.

Rystad says LNG importers will pay at least $39B more in 2026 despite buying 60.7M tonnes less, as Qatari and UAE cargoes stuck behind Hormuz push buyers into pricier spot supply. Total LNG bill: $256B, up 18%. #LNG #NaturalGas #Hormuz oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-…

STOCKS OF CRUDE OIL IN THE US STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE FELL TO 282.6 MLN BARRELS LAST WEEK, LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1982 @DeItaone

🇨🇳 China’s AI market has entered a severe crash, with the tech-heavy STAR50 Index dropping 40% from its July high in less than four months. The correction has wiped out roughly $480 billion in market value. While Western tech stocks see only minor pullbacks, the collapse in China marks the burst of what fund managers call a “speculative crazy bull” market. 📰 Reuters

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JUST IN: Iran has tested another ballistic missile. The missile was launched from Iran’s Azerbaijan province. Over the past several weeks, Iran has conducted multiple tests involving ballistic missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles. IRGC officials previously said some of Iran's weapons had not been used during the war. The latest launches may provide some support for that claim, although the exact weapons involved are not clear.

Seatrium lands deal to complete Keppel’s offshore rig quartet dlvr.​it/TW3hV1

VLCC delivery wave set to reach levels not seen since the 1970s dlvr.​it/TW3hZ6

Oil on water in million barrels (Vortexa) #OOTT

BREAKING: Russia says it is ready to supply unlimited diesel to the United States. Three Russian diesel tankers are already heading to the US East Coast, with volumes set to rise to 1 million tons in December.

Rig incident reported offshore Gabon. BW Energy operator, Borr Drilling rig. $borr