Drill, Burnham, drill? The oil basin that is a totem for Trump

When oil was first discovered off the north-east coast of Scotland in September 1969, industry folklore has it that the duty superintendent on the rig carefully poured it into a pickle jar commandeered from the canteen and took it back to Amoco’s Great Yarmouth office in Norfolk. There, it was emptied into an ash tray, sniffed and then set alight. From that modest start, North Sea oil – as the huge basin of oil and gas reserves quickly became known – emerged as a driving force of the British economy and a symbol of national power and renewal as the UK emerged from the Opec oil crisis. By 1977, the then Labour prime minister, Jim Callaghan, declared: “God has given Britain her best opportunity for 100 years in the shape of North Sea oil.” A subsequent white paper said it offered “a unique opportunity for Britain to improve her economic performance, raise her living standards, move forward to full employment, and develop a socially just society”. A decade later, the basin became a central part of Margaret Thatcher’s political project , with its revenues approaching 10% of the UK’s total tax take at times, supporting a programme of tax cuts and privatisation. View image in fullscreen Oil rig in the North Sea, 1974. Photograph: Zuma/Shutterstock Output peaked at the turn of the century, when the basin produced a staggering 4.4m barrels of oil equivalent a day. Aberdeen, chosen over Dundee by the fossil fuel corporations for their onshore headquarters because it had fewer links to bothersome trade unions, was booming, with offshore jobs plentiful and well paid. Ewan Gibbs, a specialist in the history of energy in the UK at the University of Glasgow, said that as the oil began to flow, it was seized upon by politicians and the public as a symbol of British imperial might. “At its peak, oil was associated not only with immense wealth but also with power and international prestige,” said Gibbs. “It came to embody a sense of national renewal.” Now, those boom years are firmly in the past. The amount of economically viable oil and gas has declined rapidly in the past two decades and by 2030 the basin will produce just 15% of its peak output. Many of the biggest oil and gas corporations have left as stocks dwindle – BP was the latest, announcing this summer an end to six decades in the basin. And the jobs are going too. During the boom years, North Sea oil directly employed about 120,000 people and supported hundreds of thousands more jobs indirectly. Data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that figure has now dropped to about 27,000 direct employees. However, although its economic significance has waned, the idea of North Sea oil has retained a disproportionate grip on the national psyche, and – as culture wars over the climate crisis continue to be stoked by politicians and media on the right – it remains a useful symbol of sovereignty and power for some. “Even as it declines, there is still a strong sense for many people that this is Britain’s oil, that it is bountiful and belongs to the country, and that if we don’t exploit it we are turning our back on something important,” said Gibbs. “It is this emotional attachment, this idea that this is our oil that means, even as the area becomes less economically significant, it retains an outsized importance in the country’s imagination.” Culture wars In the run-up to the 2024 general election, the Labour party announced there would be no new exploratory licences for oil and gas in the North Sea. It was a significant moment in the fight against climate breakdown. In 2021, the International Energy Agency had said there could be “no new investments in oil, gas and coal” if the world was to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Now, the government of one of the richest countries in the world was making it clear it was moving away from fossil fuels to focus on renewable energy. It was also a victory for the then energy secretary, Ed Miliband. He had been making the case within Labour that a rapid transition to a cleaner energy systems would not only help tackle the climate crisis but had the potential to make the UK a “clean energy superpower” and unshackle it from the increasingly volatile fossil fuel market, creating jobs and lowering bills. Miliband argued that the transition to a renewable future could also offer a lifeline to communities in north-east Scotland that had seen jobs and wealth disappear as the flow of oil dried up, despite hundreds of new drilling licences being awarded. “In the 20th century through North Sea oil, Britain exported to the world,” Miliband told a speech to the Labour party conference before the 2024 general election. “In the 21st century … Britain will be an energy superpower once again, exporting clean power to the world and controlling our economic destiny. British families and businesses will never again be held to ransom by [the Russian president, Vladimir] Putin.” But fast forward two years, and despite wars in Iran and Ukraine again highlighting the perils of dependence on a volatile fossil fuel market and an escalating climate crisis, those plans are once more at the centre of a political storm. The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, and the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, have called for a massive expansion of drilling in the North Sea, claiming they would reverse the ban on new licences if elected. In a speech this year, Farage declared that the UK should be “self-sufficient in gas”. Badenoch followed with the promise of a growing UK oil and gas industry that would “ensure our energy security for generations to come”. . Donald Trump is also a fan of a UK version of “drill, baby, drill” in the North Sea. In one of several interventions on the subject, he claimed the basin was “one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world … with 500 years of oil and gas reserves left”. Such statements have left climate experts, geologists and energy specialists scratching their heads. Steve Pye, a professor of energy systems and the deputy director of the Energy Institute at University College London, said: “The North Sea basin has been in decline since 2000. There are no credible prospects of reversing this.” But in the midst of a cost of living crisis, others are making the case for any intervention, however small, that might ease the burden on households and boost Treasury coffers. Some trade unions and parts of the Labour party are in favour of exploiting the North Sea’s existing licences, arguing they provide some jobs and bring in at least some tax revenue. View image in fullscreen Ed Miliband has long advocated a fast transition to renewable energy as a way to shore up Britain’s energy security and reduce bills. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Experts, however, point out that energy prices are set globally and there is not enough oil or gas in the North Sea to have any impact, so there would be no reduction in UK bills whatever the country did. Also, the vast majority of what is left in the North Sea is oil that overwhelmingly goes abroad to be refined and then sold on the international markets, meaning it has no impact on the UK’s energy security. More of the gas produced in the North Sea goes to UK homes and businesses but there is less of that left, certainly not enough to make any meaningful impact on our reliance on imports. A recent study by Carbon Brief found that even if the government allowed new licences it would only make a fractional difference: gas extraction from the North Sea is forecast to drop 99% by 2050 without new licences, compared with 97% if new licences were awarded. Conversely, the study found that the continued expansion of renewables and low-carbon technologies in the North Sea would reduce reliance on volatile gas imports much faster than allowing new drilling, with energy from new wind and solar from the latest government auction expected to produce six times more electricity by 2030 than new drilling licences would. On employment, the campaign group Uplift points out that the number of jobs supported by the oil and gas industry has more than halved in the last decade – from 441,000 to 214,000 today – despite previous governments issuing hundreds of new licences in six separate licensing rounds. And on tax, critics have questioned the scale of the benefit once you take into account state subsidies to oil and gas companies, which globally run into the hundreds of billions of pounds. Others question the public appetite for fattening the profit margins of fossil fuel companies, which made a record $93bn in profit in the three months to June, while fossil fuel-driven climate disasters, including wildfires and droughts, hit Europe, the UK experienced five heatwaves this summer, and energy costs continued to rise. View image in fullscreen Wildfire rages in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, after extended dry and hot weather. Photograph: Ethan Fowler/JNA/Zuma Press/Shutterstock In June last year, when he was still the mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham backed the fossil fuel treaty, a proposed international pact on phasing out coal, oil and gas – calling it a “lifeline” that “all governments” should join. In recent weeks, Burnham, now prime minister, has spooked many who want to see this commitment transferred to national government when he said he would take a “pragmatic” approach to oil and gas drilling in the North Sea and that the government could not ignore the potential resources it holds. Miatta Fahnbulleh, who replaced Miliband as energy secretary, has expressed similar views since taking office, although previously she has spoken out about the realities of the climate crisis. With consultations on the Jackdaw and Rosebank field projects now closed, a decision from the government could come at any time. Tessa Khan, the director at Uplift, said it was “a dangerous fantasy” to talk up the potential of North Sea oil as a fix for Britain’s problems.