Why Trump's oil boom is bad news for the UK
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The emergence of the United States as an energy superpower has reshaped the global economy. Good news for its allies, right? Well, not necessarily...
In Texas, fracking has turned America from a major importer into the world's biggest energy producer, effectively creating "another Saudi Arabia" almost overnight.
But as Europe looks to the US to plug the energy gap caused by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the reality on the ground is more complicated.
Ed Conway, our economics and data editor, joins Niall to explore why the US can't simply ride to the rescue and what that means for the UK's energy security.
Have you got a question for Niall? Email the show: why@sky.uk
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The United States has become the world's biggest producer of crude oil, |
| 0:06.9 | not that we can rely on them to plug the gap caused by the Iran War. |
| 0:10.8 | And this is why. |
| 0:15.8 | In 1987, a newborn baby is abandoned in a remote spot. |
| 0:21.1 | Nobody goes down that lane. |
| 0:22.8 | Why would you think anyone would have picked me up from there? |
| 0:25.0 | For decades, Jess has searched for answers. |
| 0:28.4 | Why didn't that person want me? |
| 0:29.9 | But as she gets closer to the truth, things spiral out of her control. |
| 0:34.2 | I think I'll always be angry. |
| 0:35.8 | Could it have ended differently? |
| 0:37.5 | From Tortoise Investigates and the Observer, this is foundling. |
| 0:41.6 | Light's always come out, don't they? Skeletons are always going to come out eventually. |
| 0:47.1 | Hi everyone, Neil here, and over the past couple of years, our economics editor, Ed Conway, |
| 0:51.8 | has been taking a look at the materials, the stuff that |
| 0:55.3 | keeps the world ticking over. And given what's going on in the Gulf, he's turned his attention |
| 0:59.6 | to crude, specifically the oil rush currently taking place in Texas. |
| 1:04.8 | Stretching off into the horizon, an unending vista of drills and oil wells, pools of fracking water, storage tanks, the hallmarks of a mammoth |
| 1:15.9 | energy boom. And it's all down to fracking. That's the type of oil extraction that traditionally |
| 1:21.3 | we in the UK have been pretty sniffy about. The United States has a rather different attitude. |
| 1:26.7 | If you look at just total crude oil and other oil products production in America, |
| 1:31.0 | it's gone from being dependent on the rest of the world to being self-sufficient. |
... |
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