Donald Trump says UK’s retreat from North Sea oil and gas is a ‘big mistake’
Donald Trump has criticised the UK’s move away from oil and gas production, urging the Government to “open up” the North Sea and get rid of “windmills”.
The US president-elect said in a social media post that Britain is “making a very big mistake” on its energy policy.
On his platform Truth Social, Mr Trump posted a link to an article about Labour’s decision to increase taxes for North Sea oil and gas producers.
In October, the UK Government said it would raise a so-called windfall tax on companies drilling in the North Sea to 38% from 35%.
Renewable energy projects
Labour wants to use the income from oil and gas taxation to raise money for more renewable energy projects.
Mr Trump wrote: “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!”
The president-elect was responding to a November announcement by US oil firm Apache, which said it will exit the North Sea.
Apache said the windfall tax has made its UK operations “uneconomic”.
However, oil companies have been making a gradual exit from the North Sea for decades as the basin slowly gets used up.
Production from the region peaked at 4.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 1999 to about 1.3 million today.
The UK Government wants to decarbonise the power system by 2030, meaning reducing the use of gas-fired power plants and replacing it with renewable energy.
Wind turbines
The plan includes ramping up new wind turbine projects to quadruple energy generation from offshore wind over the next half-decade.
Mr Trump, on the other hand, has promised to increase US and oil and gas production when he re-enters the White House.
Apache, a Texan company, said in November that it will cease all production at its UK assets by December 2029.
It said this is “well ahead of what would have been an otherwise reasonable time frame”.
US oil giant ExxonMobil exited the North Sea in July last year.
And Shell and Equinor said they would combine their offshore oil and gas assets in the region into a new company.
Zoe Yujnovich, director of Shell’s integrated gas and upstream business, said at the time that the decision was partly because it is “no longer the prolific basin that it once was”.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the North Sea Transition Authority were approached for comment.
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I guess he’ll just have to invade and put Halliburton in charge of energy policy.
So add us to the list of nations he wants to invade. Canada is already in that list.
Well according to Trump windmills cause cancer.
And they kill whales. And bleach is an excellent thing to treat covid, and UV just gotta get it in the body somehow. Just about anything that falls out the blokes gob you have to fact check.
Trump needs to keep his comments related to the USa!
The UK now imports half of it’s oil and gas supply from the United States. Another Trump administration on the White House is likely to impose export levee on this, so he might have a point about the UK unilaterally axing it’s native supplies. This will inevitably increase energy prices.