Iron ore billionaire and green energy investor Andrew Forrest is threatening to pull his investments out of the UK, after the government announced an expansion of North Sea oil and gas drilling.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak committed on Monday to new carbon capture and storage hubs in north-east Scotland and the Humber in north-east England, as he seeks to shore up climate-sceptic votes.
The news comes after the latest licensing round for the North Sea attracted 115 bids in January.
Forrest says he will shift his investments in the UK to North America if the country wavers on its commitment to net zero targets and supports oil and gas.
“If I see this country steering itself over a cliff, backing fossil fuel, I’m going to start pulling out,” he told Bloomberg TV.
“I’ll of course say the same thing to other countries. I must invest where I know I have proper leadership, not leadership that is on the clickbait cycle.”
Forrest’s investment in the UK is via Fortescue Metals Group, which bought UK-based Williams Advanced Engineering in March 2022 for $223 million.
In June, Fortescue said it was adding a new 13,500m2 factory in Banbury, in Oxfordshire, to build advanced batteries and electric powertrains, slated to open next year. The first prototype was due this month as is the first mining haul truck module.
Reckoning coming
Forrest also warned company leaders that they are close to a reckoning, following public pressure in Australia on government ministers to oppose new coal mines.
“The fact that it’s happened in the political class is moments away from the business class, and I will not be able to feel sorry for those chief executives, chairmans or politicians when they’re held to account for being wilfully ignorant now,” he said.
“It’s not up to consumers not to consume energy, it’s not up to consumers not to fly to the other side of the world to see their grandmothers, it’s up to the energy companies, the metal companies and the politicians to change the energy and the materials we give to consumers that doesn’t wreck the planet.”
Last year the full Federal Court in Australia overturned a ruling a year earlier imposing a duty of care on the environment minister to consider the harm to children from climate change as part of the approval process for a coal mine.
This year, the Environment Council of Central Queensland filed a request in the Federal Court for a judicial review of environment minister Tanya Plibersek’s decision to reject global warming as a relevant factor in the Narrabri and Mount Pleasant mines.
Tory retreat from climate agenda
Sunak’s government successfully defended the recent Uxbridge byelection by opposing the area’s inclusion in London mayor Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ), a green tax levied on higher-polluting cars and vans.
Environmental campaigners fear this will encourage both parties to move away from green policies in order to win votes.
Already the prime minister is tempering the UK’s climate change ambitions, saying he’s still committed to net zero goals by 2050 but it should be done in a “pragmatic and proportionate way”.
The government has already allocated £20 billion over two decades for carbon capture and storage, a technology that to date has not proved to work at scale anywhere in the world.
The two global success stories, both in Norway, have faced significant problems.
Forrest told Politico after his explosive interview that carbon capture and storage was a ploy created by oil and gas companies so they can continue extracting fossil fuels, and an industry “just waiting for the next idiot to come along”.
