North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing this important debate and for her thoughtful and passionate speech introducing it. Many colleagues have made excellent speeches, and I will not repeat their points.

The just transition must be both just and fair, so that sectors and communities are not left on the industrial scrapheap as they were during the Thatcher years. If the just transition means anything, it must mean something for the north-east of Scotland. It cannot be left to the market alone to sort those things out. To give one small example, I have recently been lobbied by the plumbing industry. A crisis is coming in a few years’ time because the financial problems facing the training and education sector mean that it cannot possibly meet its demands. One thing the Minister could do is nudge the private sector to invest in apprenticeships in those areas, so that we are preparing alternatives for young people as North sea basin declines.

The Scottish Government set up their Just Transition Commission in 2018 to provide scrutiny and advice on delivery. Northern Ireland is currently consulting on setting up its own commission; Wales established its commission in 2013. Where is the UK-wide just transition commission? The UK Government launched their North sea consultation in March as

“a dialogue with North Sea communities”

to develop a plan for making the best of this transition. I trust that in his closing remarks the Minister will tell us how that is going.

The chairman of GB Energy—perhaps the flagship project of this Government, with its headquarters in Aberdeen—described its work as “a very long-term project,” with the much-promised 1,000 new jobs taking perhaps 20 years to realise. Even then, it will be a mere drop in the North sea when it comes to replacing the jobs that will be lost in the years ahead. Unite’s Scottish secretary Derek Thomson recently said:

“If you look at how many jobs are going to go in the north-east, if GB Energy does not pick up the pace and start to move workers in there and start to create proper green jobs, then I’m afraid we could be looking at a desolation of the north-east.”

“Speeding ahead” is an interesting choice of words for the Secretary of State in this context, given that any decision on funding the Acorn project at St Fergus is now in a most uncertain position in the June spending review.

I have been asking about this since I was elected. The UK Government were able to find £22 billion for carbon capture schemes in Merseyside and Teesside last autumn, but they could not dig deep enough into their pockets for Scotland, which has much of the infrastructure already. I await June’s announcement with trepidation as speed and commitment to North sea communities in the north-east of Scotland have been thin on the ground so far from the UK Government. Will the Minister please give us a clue about the Government’s plans?

The Acorn project, the new power station at Peterhead and the investments in key strategic ports at Peterhead and Fraserburgh are key components of the just transition. A Robert Gordon University review of UK offshore energy workforce skills transferability showed that 90% of the oil and gas workforce have transferable skills to work in adjacent energy sectors. The just transition needs buy-in from the UK Government. It cannot be left to market forces, which are even more unpredictable in the current political climate, thanks to Trump and the ongoing energy crisis, and of course Putin too.

Households are facing a third rise in energy costs since Labour came to power. Indeed, the vast majority of the UK’s offshore wind capacity is owned by companies outside the UK. The typical North sea turbine contains more than three times as much material from abroad as it does from domestic manufacturers. The wider context is an energy market that is, paradoxically, working against both the interests of the consumer and the companies and investors who want to realise the green energy industrial revolution. If Members do not believe me, they should take a deep dive into zonal pricing.

The clean industry bonus, an extra revenue support in contracts for difference rounds, has the potential to bring quality jobs to the UK and in particular Scotland and the north-east of Scotland, but there is an absence of detail on whether specifics such as job quality will be a requirement for investors to receive financial support from the Government. Does the Minister acknowledge that private investment does not necessarily guarantee good, secure jobs? How will he ensure that the clean industry bonus delivers good-quality jobs in Scotland and supports workers currently reliant on the North sea oil and gas industry?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Seamus Logan]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point about the choice of language, but will he confirm whether he and his party still believe in net zero and the drive towards achieving our climate targets?

[Andrew Bowie]

Yes, of course we believe in net zero, but not in setting arbitrary targets and dates that are unachievable without making this country poorer or more reliant on foreign imports for our energy supply. The fact is that imports of LNG have doubled just to keep the lights on as we actively accelerate the decline in our own North sea oil and gas industry. That is nonsensical—it is madness. It is an act of national self-harm. We should revert to our policy of maximum economic recovery from the North sea while doing all we can to ensure that the companies involved invest in new technologies.