1/3 Energy giants BP and Equinor agreed to press ahead with plans for £1.5bn development in #Teesside#Freeport after demanding a guarantee they are not becoming involved in a project marred by corruption.
2/3 "Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, who is running the #Teesworks project, confirmed that a “bespoke clause” was inserted into their legal agreement, at the request of the two energy firms."
3/3 “BP and Equinor wanted assurances, given the noise they were hearing,” he (Houchen) told The Yorkshire Post. “We were able to provide those assurances and they signed the deal last week. Now they’re investing north of £1.5bn on this site. If anything, it exonerates us.”
1/ Mr Hunt added: “(#Teesside) is best example in the country of how if you have people who care about how businesses flourish you can really transform an area that has in the past been left behind.”
2/ First, they were very underwhelming in terms of total job creation. The Treasury predicted that after five years they would have created 54,000 jobs. The actual figure was less than one third of this.
3/ Second, the majority of these jobs were in low skilled occupations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself. But they did not contribute to changing the make-up of a struggling economy – they brought in (a little) more of the same.
1/ I hope that this thread will highlight, in a very basic way, just some of the connections and interests between the IEA, Atlas, Cato, ExxonMobil, Charles Koch, Philip Morris, Chase Foundation, etc and their influence on the UK government over the last decade.
2/ The Atlas Network
The Atlas Network was founded by Antony Fisher in 1981. It is a non-profit organisation “supporting” over 450 free market and antiregulation organisations worldwide.
3/ Fisher also founded London’s Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 1995 after working with Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek at the Mont Pelerin Society (founded by Hayek and where Charles Koch was also a member), hence Atlas’s close connection with UK politics.