Fancy that, prices work do they, even for gas?

An interesting little story here:

The UK is producing almost a fifth more gas than last year, boosting efforts to wean the country and its European neighbours off Russian energy.

Production of gas in Norway has also climbed 10pc year-on-year, according to Bloomberg data analysed by Bank of America. North Sea drillers in British waters have produced 17pc more gas so far in 2022 than in the same period last year.

UK production in early June is running at almost 100m cubic metres (mcm) per day, after falling to 40mcm last summer.

Bank of America analysts said UK production had recovered from a “horrific” 2021 following a collapse in prices one year earlier and tougher environmental rules.

If people can make more profit from doing something then they do more of that thing? Gosh, now that is a surprise.

The political reaction to which is that those profits must be taxed off everyone so that they stop this damn producing more stuff in the face of dearth.

Politics is indeed an often counterproductive method of running things, isn’t it. Especially since this point is featured on pages two and three of every introductory economics textbook ever in that nice little set of supply and demand curves. Presumably no one in politics has ever read one or, possibly, believed it.