Labour Leader Reassures Oil and Gas Needed for ‘Many Years to Come’

The Total Culzean platform pictured in the North Sea off Aberdeen, Scotland, on April 8, 2019. (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Oil and gas will be necessary for “many, many years” to come, Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has said following criticism from trade unions that his energy plans will hit jobs.

Two major trade unions have expressed concerns after media reports suggested that Labour would promise to halt new oil and gas production in the North Sea in its net zero energy policy, to be announced later this month.

The GMB union said the plan will create a “cliff edge” that will hit jobs, and the Unite union said Labour must make it clear that it will not let workers pay the price.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer talks to workers during a visit to Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, England, on June 5, 2023. (Ben Birchall/PA Media)

Speaking on a visit to Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset on Monday, Starmer said that tapping new sources of energy would bring fresh opportunities.

“I think we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity now to seize the jobs of the future,” he told broadcasters.

“Oil and gas will be part of that, because where there is existing licences they will go on to the 2050s and so oil and gas will be part of our energy mix for many, many years to come.

“But we need to seize the opportunities for the next generation of jobs. And that is in renewables, it is in nuclear, Hinkley Point C here today, staring at the future. We have got 9,000 people working on this site, they are going to power the UK and they are the jobs of the future.”

‘Naïve’

GMB General Secretary Gary Smith said on Sunday that Labour’s policies are “naive” and will “create a cliff edge with oil and gas extraction from the North Sea.”

He told Sky News, “There is a lot of oil and gas in the North Sea and the alternatives facing the country are that we either produce our own oil and gas—take responsibility for our carbon emissions—or we are going to import more oil and gas.”

Smith said workers in the petrochemical industry are going to be “very worried” about Labour’s plans.

He said that the sector had been promised “tens of thousands of jobs” in renewable energy “time and time again” but they “simply have not emerged,” adding, “That has been the sorry state of the renewables industry around the country.”

Last week, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said Labour must be “very clear that they will not let workers pay the price for the transition to renewable energy.”

“When it comes to jobs, we can’t have jam tomorrow,” she said.

Nuclear Recrimination

It comes as Labour accused the Conservatives of a “shambolic” failure to open any nuclear power plants during 13 years of power.

The opposition party claims the Tories’ failure to open any of the 10 nuclear sites approved under the last Labour government has cost 7,000 British jobs.

Ahead of the visit to the nuclear plant, Starmer said: “Nuclear is a critical part of the UK’s energy mix. It’s shambolic that after 13 years of Tory government, not one of the 10 nuclear sites approved by the last Labour government have been built.”

Responding to Labour’s nuclear criticisms, a Tory spokesman said: “In 1997 the Labour Party cut the legs off Britain’s nuclear industry, declaring ‘no new nuclear,’ nationalising British Energy, and handing our energy dependency to China and France. That’s why there hasn’t been a nuclear power station built under the Labour Party since Britain had the shilling.

“The Conservatives started turning that around, delivering the first large-scale nuclear project Hinkley Point C and agreeing last year to begin Sizewell C.”

Evgenia Filimianova and PA Media contributed to this report.