North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Andrew Bowie

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) on bringing such an important issue to Westminster Hall today and on opening the debate with such an eloquent and passionate speech on behalf of her constituents.

For many of us here today, this is a deeply personal debate. We all know or are related to people employed in the oil and gas industry off the north-east coast of our country. Finding a solution and ensuring that the transition is indeed just for those workers is vital for our constituents. We often talk about needing the North sea for our energy security, to produce the tax revenue for the Exchequer and to support supply chains and local economies. It sounds incredibly intangible at times, but for the 200,000 people employed in the oil and gas industry, directly or indirectly, the impacts of the transition in the North sea will be very tangible indeed. As the decline accelerates, we risk seeing lost incomes and lost futures in whole communities without a purpose. That is 200,000 employees up and down the entire United Kingdom: the oil and gas supply chain touches nearly every single constituency in the United Kingdom, but more than 68% of all direct employment is in Scotland, and more than 80% of that is in the north-east of Scotland, in and around Aberdeen.

In my own constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, everybody knows someone who relies on the offshore industry for their livelihood. Just last week, during recess, I was in Westhill speaking to companies. That town is the subsea exploration capital of the world and home to Total, Technip, Tetra, Subsea7 and more. The oil and gas industry is the lifeblood of the north-east of Scotland. That is evident to anybody who visits.

Although I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North for the passion that she brings to the debate and her concern for her constituents, I cannot help reflecting on the rhetoric emanating from the Scottish Government over the past few years and their presumption against oil and gas, which has contributed to an increasingly pessimistic outlook for the North sea. When we engage with oil and gas companies, it is the language and the tone that we use to describe the situation in the North sea that they say is driving away the investment that they need to drive forward new technologies such as offshore wind, whether floating or fixed bottom. When we say “decline”, “ageing” or “terminal”, that does not give investors from overseas a thriving and attractive investment picture. We need to address that language.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does the shadow Minister believe that investors do not know that it is a declining field?

[Andrew Bowie]

Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right that it is a declining basin—everybody is aware of that—but we must be careful about the language we use about it. We should point out the positives that can be achieved through further investment and recognise the profits being realised by energy companies engaged primarily in the extraction and exploitation of oil and gas underneath the North sea. They will be investing in those new technologies, and they need to convince shareholders—who are deciding whether to invest in the middle east, south-east Asia, the United States of America or elsewhere in the globe—that the North sea is still an attractive place to invest.

The language that we use about that basin and the industry in the United Kingdom is incredibly important, so I urge the hon. Gentleman to engage with the industry and speak to individuals—as I have; I know that the Minister, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North and others do too—because that is exactly what they tell us. They want to contribute to the transition—indeed, they lead it—but they want the negative atmosphere overshadowing the North sea to change. That means changing some of the rhetoric and language used to describe the industry, which is so important to the economy of the north-east of Scotland.