UK Making Mistake by Retreating From North Sea Oil, Gas, Says Trump

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest in Phoenix, Ariz. on Dec. 22, 2024. Rick Scuteri/AP Photo

President-elect Donald Trump has said that the UK is making a mistake by retreating from oil and gas.

Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Jan. 3: “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of windmills!”

Trump’s post also included a link to a report from November 2024 about U.S. oil and gas producer APA Corp’s unit Apache’s plans to exit the North Sea by the year-end of 2029. The company expects North Sea production to fall by 20 percent year on year in 2025.

Trump’s second presidential term and intervention could spell a “sea change,” an oil industry insider told The Epoch Times.

Scotland is the largest producer of oil and the second largest producer of gas in Europe, with most oil and gas activity in Scottish waters taking place offshore, beyond 12 nautical miles from the coastline, according to Nature Scot.

The ruling Labour Party’s policy is that it is committed to ensuring a phased transition in the North Sea, and no new oil and gas licenses or coal licenses will be issued.

This follows on from the previous Conservative administration’s Climate Change Act 2008, which legally commits the UK to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

‘Departures of Supermajors’

Viaro Energy CEO Francesco Mazzagatti told The Epoch Times that “Trump’s call to open up the North Sea has definitely reverberated through the industry, and his strong stance on the matter has the potential to cause a sea change of sorts.”

The company has 30 fields in the North Sea.

“Considering Trump’s pledge to radically increase tariffs on foreign exports, the UK cannot afford to remain stagnant in efforts to reach a trade deal with the U.S., and we have already seen the government reaffirming its commitment to increased defense spending once he called for it,” he said.

Mazzagatti said that departures of supermajors from the North Sea will “certainly add complexity to these questions.”

Last year, oil company Deltic Energy blamed “negative political rhetoric” and fiscal uncertainty for not securing financing for a major North Sea gas project. The company said at the time it was pulling out of a project to develop Pensacola, which could contain 326 million barrels of oil.

Oil companies such as Apache have also said they are leaving the North Sea due to the impact of a windfall tax. In 2022, the Conservative government introduced a tax on oil and gas companies’ windfall profits, which former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt extended into 2029.

“I expect that the government will have to reconsider its pre-election position once the country feels the true impact of the North Sea profits it is losing,” Mazzagatti said.

He said that he could not imagine that the government would “insist on pushing the net-zero agenda in its current form at the expense of the workers” and said it risked “decimating entire communities” like the UK’s coal pit closures did during the 1980s.

Mazzagatti said that he believes Labour is “counting chickens before they are hatched, as there is still no clarity on how the government intends to ensure job stability and matching economic conditions in their proposals.”

100,000 Jobs

The UK’s low-carbon ambitions have sparked controversy due to concerns over potential job losses.

Last year, the 39th Energy Transition report from Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce warned that industry confidence was plummeting, with high taxes and Labour’s exploration ban threatening to end the domestic oil and gas industry.

It said that the next government would have just “100 days to save 100,000 jobs” in the North Sea energy.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.