Labour is “tone deaf” on its rumoured plan for no new North Sea oil and gas projects, Scottish Energy Minister Gillian Martin said at an Aberdeen event today.
The Aberdeenshire East SNP MSP told Energy Voice, sister website to The Press and Journal: “I think it’s too simplistic.
“Effectively, they’re positioning themselves to be the next government of the UK, which has control over all the licences and all the activity in the North Sea.”
Ms Martin said Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was “really going to have to work” on his policy.
Labour believed to be in favour of banning all new oil and gas projects
She was responding to controversial statements by a Labour source in the Sunday Times last weekend.
Sir Keir is expected to announce there will be no new oil and gas licences under a Labour government.
But it is believed his party’s new energy strategy will allow existing oil and gas wells to continue to be used.
Holyrood’s own ‘presumption’ against new North Sea drilling
The Scottish Government’s own policy, through its draft energy transition plan published in January, has a presumption against new North Sea exploration.
Last week Net-zero and Just Transition Cabinet Secretary Mairi McAllan told an Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce event the unlimited extraction of fossil fuels was “not consistent with Scotland’s ambitious climate obligations”.
But she qualified this by saying “simply stopping all future activity is wrong”.
And she warned Labour’s policy “could threaten energy security, while destroying the very skills we need to transition to the new low-carbon economy”.
The north-east has not traditionally been a Labour heartland and I think that shows.”
Gillian Martin, energy minister
Today, Ms Martin said Labour’s rumoured ban on new oil and gas projects would make people in the industry “a little bit uneasy” and see the policy as “a little bit tone deaf”.
Speaking on the fringes of the Invest ABZ event at the Chester Hotel, she added: “The north-east has not traditionally been a Labour heartland and I think that shows.”
The minister also suggested Labour election candidates in the region may resent the “lack of nuance” in the reported comments on oil and gas.
Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour Party supports a halt to new oil and gas projects.
But it has also insisted Labour will not pursue a “cliff edge” stop for the industry.
Despite criticism from the SNP on Labour’s energy policy, First Minister Humza Yousaf recently shared similar views.
He told delegates at the All Energy conference in Glasgow there should be “no new extraction” of North Sea oil and gas unless there is a “good reason” for it. He added there were “a number of different factors” to take into account when assessing the future of new fields.
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