North Sea Energy

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement.

Another day, another demonstration of this Government�s total ignorance of our oil and gas industry and the north-east of Scotland, their incompetence on the economy and their disregard for the hundreds of thousands of workers in our North sea, as well as their dangerous ineptitude when it comes to our energy security. No other country in the world, especially at a time of heightened global instability and volatility, would actively choose to aggressively and at pace shut down its domestic oil and gas industry, but that is exactly what this Government and in particular this Department, led by the eco-warrior in chief, are doing.

The consultation, announced yesterday, was trumpeted by Government spinners as the beginning of the end of the energy profits levy and a brave new dawn for the North sea. It is complete and utter rubbish. It is a total joke. The energy profits levy is higher now than it was before, because of the decisions of this Labour Government. The investment allowances have almost all been scrapped by this Labour Government. Crucially, the windfall tax is now in place for far longer�until 2030�because of this Labour Government. That is five years away, but the oil and gas industry does not have five years. Investment is drying up, and work is being put on pause. Companies are literally shutting up shop.

The truth is that the high-paid, good, long-term jobs that the Minister speaks of do not yet exist in renewables in the north-east of Scotland. People are leaving in their droves for other countries, such as the USA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Norway, where the industry does have a future. She says we owe it to the North sea�s workers and communities to come up with a proper plan for their future, but this Government�s plan for the North sea is simply to shut it down. This Government�s plan is a betrayal of those workers. This Government�s plan will devastate the communities of the north-east of Scotland.

It is said that in every oil-producing country in the world you will find an Aberdonian. It turns out that the only country in which you will not find an Aberdonian working in oil in the near future is Scotland, driven by this mad rush to clean power 2030 and the Government�s obsession with renewables at the expense of everything and everyone else. It may be �Drill, baby, drill� in the United States, but it is �Dole, baby, dole� under Labour in the United Kingdom. The Government�s decisions will cost our economy some �12 billion in lost tax revenue to the Treasury, on top of the �12 billion in lost capital investment. This makes a complete mockery of their claim to be anything like pro-growth.

It is insanity to be doing all this to our own industry while becoming increasingly reliant on imports from abroad and causing more carbon to be released into the atmosphere: more imports of liquefied natural gas, fracked in the USA, frozen and then shipped across the Atlantic on diesel-chugging ships; or more imports from Norway, a net exporter, which is drilling from the very same sea from which we could drill ourselves. It is completely nonsensical. This Government are a complete joke, overseeing the wilful deindustrialisation of our nation. If the Minister will not take my word for it, perhaps she will take the word of the GMB leader, who said:

�In the new geopolitical reality�it�s madness. If the North Sea is being prematurely closed down and we are increasing import dependence�that�s bad for jobs, economic growth and national security.�

Or perhaps she will take the word of the general secretary of Unite, who said:

�we need to resist any calls that amount to offshoring our carbon responsibilities for the sake of virtue signalling.�

May I ask the Minister whether she has personally met any oil and gas workers since taking office, in order to understand what her Government�s policy means for them and their families, and whether the Secretary of State has done so? Will the industry receive an answer on the uncertainty surrounding the calculation of scope 3 emissions and environmental impact assessments? Given the announcement of �200 million to support the 400 workers affected by the closure of Grangemouth, how much does the Minister think the Treasury might need to find to support the 200,000 workers currently supported by the oil and gas industry? Does she agree with the Climate Change Committee that we will need oil and gas until at least 2050, and has she accounted for the higher carbon emissions associated with importing liquefied natural gas instead? Finally, let me ask whether she still sees the Department as a sponsor and a champion for the industry�because the industry certainly does not trust that to be the case.

[Sarah Jones]

The shadow Minister quoted trade union representatives, having not met them or supported them in government. That is always rich. [Interruption.] He says that he did; I stand corrected, although I suspect that he did not do it often. He quoted the general secretary of the GMB, so let me quote him back. The general secretary said:

�Tory ideology has left the UK vulnerable and exposed. Our Government stood by and exported the bulk of the jobs, closed gas storage and failed to invest in new nuclear and skills.�

I thank the shadow Minister for his questions, and I will come to them shortly, but I have to say that this is a fairly familiar story from the Conservative party: no acknowledgment of their failed record on the North sea, no acknowledgment of their having presided over the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, and no answers to the future challenges that our country faces. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was his party that lost 70,000 North sea jobs in less than a decade. His Government were content for those workers to have to go around the world to find jobs, but this Government want to keep those talents here in the UK, which is why, unlike the last Government, we have a plan.

In my statement, I said that everyone accepts that the North sea is a declining basin. I do not know whether the shadow Minister understands the basic geology, but this is a super-mature basin, and the harder it becomes to drill for oil and gas, the less likely it is that people will be successful. Only one in 10 of the licences that have been offered and granted in recent years have ultimately led to any work.

The hon. Gentleman needs to establish what his party�s view of this agenda is. The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who is sitting next to him, had some very peculiar things to say in Westminster Hall yesterday, and it is unclear exactly what their position is. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) was a Minister for the grid who opposed grid infrastructure, he was a Minister for solar who opposed solar power, and here he is now, the Minister for Aberdeen, campaigning against jobs and investment in his own community.

We are getting on with a plan for the future. First, we will invest in clean power. It is ludicrous that at this time when our bills depend on what Putin chooses to do and we have to respond, the shadow Minister is suggesting that we should do more of that. Even if there were no climate change, even if there were no push to clean power, if we drilled as much oil and gas from the North sea as we possibly could, it would amount to less than 1% of the global market and would have no impact on bills whatsoever.

We will give immediate support to workers�we have explained how we will do that�and we will support Scotland more widely. We will support Great British Energy in Aberdeen. We will support Grangemouth with �200 million from the national wealth fund. Harland and Wolff in Arnish and Methil has been saved from closure. Yesterday, the Port of Cromarty Firth received �55 million through the floating offshore wind manufacturing investment scheme. Twenty per cent. of the contracts in allocation round 6 of the contracts for difference auction are going to Scotland. We have hydrogen investment in Cromarty and Ayrshire. We have the biggest budget for the Scottish Government that we have seen. This is a party that is committed to supporting the people of Scotland, not overseeing managed decline.