Windy entrepreneur Dale Vince thinks there is “no single reason for us to drill more oil and gas in the North Sea”, former UK Green leader Caroline Lucas comments on BP’s recent cyclical profits rise by claiming, “such blatant profiteering from human misery is sickening”, while the headbangers’ headbanger George Monbiot likens Norway’s exports of hydrocarbons to “a curse to be dumped on other countries”. One can only pray that these twaddle transmitting twits do not become ill and have to call on modern, sophisticated, hydrocarbon-rich medicines.
Up to 20% of drilled oil and gas is turned into petrochemicals and these are used to make famine-reducing fertiliser, uber-useful plastics and life-saving medicines. Yet around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared last year to vote for the demented, anti-human private legislation that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the country, whether it arose domestically or abroad, to just 10% within a decade. Food starvation and painful lingering deaths are just a few thoughts and words that spring to mind.
Treason is another. What other word can possibly describe the wilful political decisions currently being made in countries like the UK to stop future extractions of hydrocarbons? How can politicians like the sinister Ed Miliband claim international leadership of the Net Zero fantasy and expect others to provide future food, fertiliser and medicines? Who will tend to an ailing G. Monbiot when the medicine cabinet is empty and Norway sells its ‘curses’ elsewhere.
Modern medicine depends heavily on hydrocarbons, both as raw material and chemical building blocks. Without them, the production of many essential drugs – from painkillers and antibiotics to cancer therapies – would be significantly more difficult, much more expensive, and in some cases impossible to produce at the required scale. Many pharmaceuticals are organic molecules and hydrocarbons form the backbone of the complex manufacturing chemistry. For example, hydrocarbon-derived benzene can be converted through controlled reactions into compounds such as phenol and aniline to synthesise drugs such as paracetamol. Treating propylene provides vital solvents and other manufacturing intermediaries.
Inactive substances made from hydrocarbons such as paraffin wax and certain emulsifiers help stabilise drugs, control their release in the body and improve their shelf life. Ointments and gels provide a stable way that active ingredients can be applied to the skin. Hydrocarbons are also widely used in drug delivery systems such as syringes and are widespread in the manufacture of protective clothing, IV bags, pill bottles and sterile packaging.
The current problems in the Gulf with the 20% reduction in the global supply of oil and gas are a dress rehearsal for absolute Net Zero. Within weeks of the shutdown of the Straits of Hormuz, prices of both medicines and fertilisers are soaring. Fertiliser prices are up 50%, and those countries with Net Zero ambitions and related high energy costs such as the UK and Australia face heavy food inflation as crop yields inevitably fall. Prices of medicines are reported by some pharmacies in the UK to have increased by 20-30%, partly due to disruptions in the supply chain, but also the rising cost of hydrocarbons. Even the Guardian seems to be catching on with an April 26th headline: ‘From syringes to stents: Iran war exposes NHS dependency on petrochemicals.’ The newspaper reports that the NHS spent £21.6 billion on medicines in 2024-25, so a touch of Net Zero-style inflation from the Gulf is likely to blow further massive holes in the budget of bankrupt Britain.
It is difficult to put a global figure on the amount of oil and gas used by the pharmaceutical business, but it is clear that many millions of tonnes of hydrocarbon-derived chemicals are consumed every year. Some drugs such as cancer treatments with highly complex molecules use large quantities of hydrocarbons and derivates such as solvents, reagents and processing aids. Inevitably, there have been suggested ‘green’ replacements but they face major, likely impossible, challenges in matching the performance, scalability and cost of traditional hydrocarbon-based processes. The existing infrastructure for petrochemical production is proven, cost-effective and capable of supplying global demand at the scale needed.
The sooner Net Zero is kicked into touch the better. This is getting serious. Entire generations, pampered and protected from hardship in ways unimaginable to their ancestors, have been brainwashed into accepting that carbon dioxide, the gas of life, somehow controls the climate thermostat. This despite a lack of proof from actual observations going back at least 600 million years. Cutting North Sea drilling and failing to frack the vast, easily extracted gas that could be sitting under our feet takes away our energy security. But even worse, it could spread hunger and once-controllable diseases across the land. It is the ultimate luxury belief from neo-Malthusian, Marxist-inspired ideologues who seek political control, seemingly at whatever cost.
History shows that this type of commanding collectivisation often ends in tears – witness the gulags and starvation of Stalin’s Soviet Union, the deliberate famines in Mao’s China, and not forgetting the mountains of human skulls that arose from Pol Pot’s Cambodian Ground Zero experiment.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
