Does any other country on earth routinely apologise for its most successful and lucrative industries? I ask because that is increasingly what appears to be happening in relation to Scotland’s oil and gas sector. It has to stop, for the sake of 100,000 skilled workers, their families and the economy as a whole.
As my time as the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport draws to a close, it is one of the ongoing quirks of Scottish politics that has never ceased to astonish me. For two years, I’ve listened to those in the industry describe the horror of their political leaders – the ones they entrust their security and prosperity to – consistently talk down their industry and threaten their very futures with extinction.
Just a few years before the Forties field started to produce in 1975, Britain was in the grip of a global energy crisis, deepened by a reliance on imported oil and gas. The gradual move from captivity to prosperity ushered in a golden era and an infrastructure bonanza for the North East. Along came more people, more opportunity and the well-earned title of Europe’s energy capital.
Then, as if the fates tried to bookend Aberdeen’s fortunes, another worldwide contraction in 2014 knocked a great deal out of the industry. Although the key players adapted, we will not see UK production or revenues anywhere near what they were in the 1980s and 90s.
Today, the global firms and the North East businesses still active in the North Sea are as preoccupied with ushering in diverse renewable technologies as they are extracting oil and gas. Giving up on either would be ruinous. Putin's war in Ukraine and the long-lasting hike in energy prices are reminders of what happens when you give up energy security.
Offshoring climate obligations by buying oil from overseas, without our world-leading regulatory and safety schemes, is just a greenwash while demand is still as high as it is. So the correct, reasonable and logical path for parties of government would be to hold out an olive branch to energy producers and encourage them to build up capacity in myriad forms. Not to demonise them, decry them as "right-wing", or stand behind student protestors with no real clue of how to reach net zero beyond trying to inconvenience hardworking people just trying to get on with their lives.
The people of the North East, whose lives and livelihoods are inextricably intertwined with the sector, are sick to death of the belligerent and ignorant attitudes of the SNP-Green government and now, Labour. Quite rightly, they feel like Scotland should be proud of the innovation and hard graft that goes on in the North Sea.
They believe we should appreciate the role it plays in keeping the lights on in Scotland and beyond. And they expect the government to be grateful at the enormous income it makes in the form of tax receipts from earnings generated in and around Aberdeen.
That’s what funds our public services after all. If you shut down this mega-economy, they will be cut back even further. Would the Green incompetents in Scotland’s government apologise when their destruction of the oil and gas industry ushers in cuts to policing, the fire brigade, the NHS, schools and vital council services? Unlikely, but we shouldn’t even grant them the opportunity.
This oil-shaming used to just be the preserve of the Green party, and could easily, and rightly, be ignored and dismissed as a result. Then the SNP, under pressure from their newfound coalition partners in Bute House, saw fit to threaten the industry with extinction – putting it in black and white in their draft energy strategy.
But for the UK Labour party to join in – by stating that if they get into government they’ll ban any new exploration and production in the North Sea – is a new low. Their intention is clear, however much they gradually try to roll back on it publicly. They want to turn off the taps in the hope of picking up votes from the Central Belt.
Sir Keir Starmer’s intervention has been so unwelcome even the trade unions are up in arms, rightly standing up for the thousands of workers who would be unemployed overnight. Incredibly, Labour hinted that by shutting down the North Sea neither energy security nor job opportunities would be hampered.
It’s no surprise Sir Keir is unwilling to go to Aberdeen to test this argument out. And it was all too much for Aberdeen’s former Labour leader Barney Crockett, who has now quit the party in direct response to this idiotic policy.
Anyone who has engaged with the issues knows shutting down the North Sea means more expensive and higher-polluting energy imports from elsewhere like Russia or Qatar to meet a demand that everyone knows isn’t going away. But it won’t just be in Aberdeen where this new-found hostility towards oil and gas has gone down badly. In places like Grangemouth and Helensburgh, significant numbers of people have stable and valuable employment tied to the sector.
Huge swathes of Scotland feel left behind and sold out by politicians abandoning an industry, implying they should be ashamed to work in fossil fuels. It’s a nonsense; it is high time we paid tribute to the people and businesses who have kept it going for so long and can continue to do so – and particularly those young people coming into or thinking about joining a vibrant industry which is playing a key part in a transition to renewables, a transition which will not happen without them.
Yes, a transition to net zero is required. But that will only be achieved with the good people of the North East leading it from the front. We should be cherishing them – not throwing them on the scrapheap.
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