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Donald Trump has criticized the UK’s plan to move away from oil and gas production in the North Sea, in the latest salvo against Sir Keir Starmer’s government in the new US administration.
The president-elect said the UK was “making a very big mistake”, adding that it should “open up the North Sea” and “Get rid of the windmills”, in a post on his social media site Truth Social.
It was not clear what prompted the post, which included a link to a November article in which APA Corporation, which owns US oil producer Apache, said it would shut down its North Sea operations by 2029, warning that high taxes and environmental regulations would make it “uneconomic”. “.
Apache itself halted drilling in the North Sea in June 2023, before the Starmer government took office last July.
Trump’s digital intervention puts him in direct opposition to one of the core policies of the Labor government, to move the UK away from fossil fuels in the coming years.
The announcement points to the future US president’s willingness to get involved in the domestic politics of other nations, which was a feature of his first term, something that could further jeopardize relations with the UK.
His intervention also followed a flurry of criticism of the Starmer government from Elon Musk, the Tesla chief and tech billionaire whom Trump has named to lead a new waste-reduction department.
The announcements by both are likely to fuel concerns within the UK about potentially volatile US-UK relations when Trump is inaugurated as president for a second term this month.
Starmer appointed former Labor Secretary Lord Peter Mandelson as the new ambassador to Washington, while the Prime Minister and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, worked to try to forge ties with Trump and his allies.
Political consensus in UK over tackling climate change has split, with the Conservative party — which introduced binding Net Zero targets for 2050 under Theresa May — leaning more towards Trump’s fossil fuel stance.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who describes herself as a “net-zero sceptic”, recently met with Vice-President-elect JD Vance, while Musk urged people to vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which has said it would scrap Britain’s net-zero emissions target.
Trump wants to boost U.S. oil and gas drilling and has said he would stop President Joe Biden’s flagship package of green energy subsidies to cut inflation.
His campaign has also said he plans to withdraw from the 2015 international Paris Agreement to combat climate change. He did so at the end of his first term in 2020, although the US rejoined a few months later under Biden.
The Starmer government has made moving away from oil and gas a major part of its agenda, citing the damaging climate impact of burning fossil fuels.
It plans to stop issuing licenses in the North Sea for new oil and gas exploration and has increased the tax rate for oil and gas producers.
The Starmer administration is instead putting a big push on renewable energy such as wind turbines and solar farms. It wants to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030, as one step towards the UK’s wider, legally binding target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions across the economy to net zero by 2050.
However, some critics have questioned the wisdom of throttling domestic oil and gas production when both will be needed for the next 25 years, albeit in decreasing amounts, even as the UK moves towards its 2050 target.
Downing Street declined to comment on Friday, but government officials highlighted Labour’s long-standing position and arguments for its energy policy.
