Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean energy obsession could soon be following her out the door.
The recent “dunkelflaute”, as the Germans call cloudy, windless weather, has energised Net Zero critics
The recent “dunkelflaute”, as the Germans call cloudy, windless weather, has energised critics of Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband’s dash to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030. Twenty seven SNP MSPs have signed the Unite declaration, including the cabinet secretary, Angus Robertson. More than half of the SNP’s depleted Westminster group have also backed the campaign to save the North Sea, including the Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn. A number of Labour MSPs have sensed the way the wind is blowing – or not blowing – in Scotland; seven are backing the u-turn in defiance of their own government’s policy.
One of Keir Starmer’s first acts as Prime Minister was to propose a ban on drilling licences in the North Sea apart from those already awarded. The UK government has also admitted in court that the country’s largest untapped oilfield, Rosebank off Shetland, was approved unlawfully. Judicial activism, combined with the increased windfall tax on oil industry profits, which was hiked to 38 per cent after the Budget, has led to warnings of a stampede of firms from the North Sea. The most recent firm to pull the plug in the North Sea is Texas giant Apache, which has been operating in the giant Forties field, east of Fraserburgh, since 2003, but suspended new drilling activity last year. Aberdeen and Grampian Chambers of Commerce claimed last May that as many as 100,000 jobs are at imminent risk.
Energy unions like Unite and the GMB fear that the devastation of working class communities in the 1980s after the closure of the coalfields could be about to repeat itself. But jobs isn’t the only issue vexing Scottish MSPs. They have been getting “pelters” as they like to say in Holyrood from constituents furious at sky high energy costs. You can see why they are angry: domestic heating bills are still 41 per cent higher than in the winter of 21/22, before the energy crisis, according to the House of Commons library.
Pensioners are the worst hit, since many have lost their Winter Fuel Payment, which was literally a lifesaver. The Scottish government is anxiously awaiting any reports of pensioners dying from the effects of cold, as was forecast by the Labour Party itself in 2017 in the days when it opposed the means-testing of WFP. With a catastrophic crisis brewing in the Scottish NHS, the SNP cannot afford to be seen to let old people freeze.
But this is not just about old people. Families have been struggling with a cost-of-living crisis, a major component of which is the cost of heating their homes.
Then there is Grangemouth. Scotland’s last petrochemical refinery, which used to process oil from the Forties Field into petrol used in Scottish pumps, is scheduled to close this year with the loss of hundreds of jobs. This has become emblematic of what many see as the Scottish government’s reckless disregard for Scotland’s oil and gas industry. Scottish voters have long supported using North Sea oil and gas rather than importing it from abroad. But in recent years, the Scottish government has been deaf to their complaints and receptive only to the green lobbies.
The first hint of a u-turn emerged before Christmas when deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, said out of the blue that the Scottish government is not opposed to new drilling licences being awarded in the North Sea. This came as a surprise to an energy sector which thought that the Scottish government’s “presumption against exploration” in its draft energy strategy meant what it said.
The SNP is not abandoning support for green energy, however. The Scottish government still regards wind power as Scotland’s “second energy bonanza” now that the oil is running out.
The late Alex Salmond used to call Scotland the “Saudi Arabia of renewables”, before Ed Miliband adopted the slogan. But the “just transition” that was supposed to have delivered tens of thousands of green jobs has just not materialised – nor has a solution to the problem of what happens when the wind doesn’t blow.
Many SNP members, who never understood Sturgeon’s capitulation to green activism, will be relieved by what appears to be a return to common sense on North Sea oil. After all, the wealth of the North Sea has been the basis of SNP economics since the 1970s. Soon, the party may, once again, be able to use the hallowed slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil” with a clear conscience.
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