North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I welcome the opportunity provided by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) to debate transitional support for oil and gas workers, who are already bearing the brunt of the North sea’s disorderly decline as reserves have dwindled without a clear agreed plan. In my first ever job in the renewable energy sector in 2008—17 years ago now—I co-wrote a report on the huge potential of British North sea ports to move into the renewable energy industry as locations where offshore wind turbines and associated infrastructure are manufactured and then shipped. While some of that has been realised, a lot of opportunities were missed as jobs went overseas. The need for action is now urgent.

We already know that new oil and gas projects are incompatible with averting the worst impacts of climate catastrophe. If the goal is also to provide North sea workers and communities with the long-term security that they deserve—and it must be—new oil and gas fields are still not the answer. Even with hundreds of new licences issued and new field approvals granted in the past decade, jobs supported by the UK oil and gas industry have more than halved already, and multiple sources predict a continued decline. We must protect those workers and provide security for that workforce, but in a declining basin that will not come from desperate attempts to double down on new drilling.

Let us take the specific example of the Rosebank oil field. Setting aside the significant climate harm that Rosebank would cause, the claim that the project will create thousands of jobs is inflated. Equinor’s own estimate suggests that only 255 direct jobs would be created in the UK over its entire lifetime. Equinor has decided to construct the main offshore vessel for Rosebank in Dubai, and unions are rightly furious that the project has yet to create a single UK design or construction job.

Meanwhile, analysis shows that properly investing in British clean energy supply chains could create over 20,000 jobs for workers in key areas such as Scotland’s oil and gas communities, many of whom, as Members have pointed out, have a lot of the transferable skills we need. Rather than bowing to the industry’s last-ditch calls for new drilling, will the Government do what is needed to protect workers? For too long, oil and gas companies have been in the driving seat of the North sea transition. Time and again, they choose to prioritise their own short-term interests over the long-term needs of workers and their communities.

As the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) said, alarmingly, just seven of the 87 North sea operators plan to invest anything at all in UK renewables between now and 2030. Instead, these companies are on a sunset ride, maximising profits from oil and gas while they still can, regardless of what that means for the rest of us. That lack of investment has clear consequences for workers, who are demanding clear pathways out of high-carbon jobs and into the renewable energy industry, where they know they have a longer-term future.

Oil and gas companies like to blame the windfall tax for preventing them from investing, but they had been failing to invest long before that levy was introduced. We have also seen companies choosing to make workers redundant while simultaneously banking excessive profits and issuing their shareholders huge payouts—more proof that they continue to prioritise their own private interests over the workforce.

Does the Minister agree that it is time to stop betting on private oil and gas industry companies doing the right thing? How does he plan to ensure that the interests of workers and communities, rather than just those of oil and gas bosses, are served in the Government’s plan for the North sea? The need for the Government to step in and manage the transition in the public interest is now urgent, and the current approach, which is overwhelmingly focused on de-risking private investment, is wholly insufficient to achieve that aim. It risks recreating the inequalities and failures of our current energy system, where wealth and jobs flow overseas.

The unjust closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery without plans to support workers is a damning indictment of that failed industry. To ensure good, secure jobs for workers and build wealth that lasts in communities that are already experiencing the sharp edge of the transition, we need an entirely new approach—one that plans ahead before private companies decide to abandon their workers. Alongside a clear, worker-led plan for the North sea, unions and climate groups are calling for the Government to commit to an emergency ringfenced funding package in the spending review. Will the Minister meet the Chancellor to ensure that those ringfenced funds are secured, and will he ensure that past mistakes are not repeated in the North sea transition?