Turns on Trump

UK oil and gas lobby turns on Trump

The U.S. president is an outspoken champion of drilling in the North Sea. The industry has decided the smart political move is to reject him.

By Nicholas Earl

Donald Trump has spent years urging Britain to go bigger on oil and gas. Now the industry has had enough of him. 

Amid a global price shock caused by the U.S.-Iran war, and accusations about the White House flip-flopping on energy policy, fossil fuel lobbyists have a message for the British government: We can no longer rely on the U.S.

When Offshore Energies UK, the country’s biggest oil and gas trade group, lobbied politicians this month, it was to promote more drilling for gas off the coast of Scotland.  

The crisis erupting in the Gulf was a reminder to align with “key allies” in the “national economic interest,” OEUK said in a letter sent to lawmakers in London and Scotland and seen by POLITICO.  

That list of allies included the EU and Canada. The U.S., led by the man who keeps telling Keir Starmer to “drill, baby, drill” in the North Sea, was absent. Instead, the U.S. was treated as a risk to stability.

“Today, the U.K. increasingly depends on LNG [liquefied natural gas] imports from countries such as Qatar and the United States,” the letter said. The case for domestic gas, it claimed, is bolstered by the instability resulting from Trump’s war. Those imports “are more expensive, more carbon intensive and, as recent events have dramatically shown, exposed to geopolitical and supply chain disruption.” 

They used to be friends 

It hasn’t always been like this. 

Trump has repeatedly backed U.K. fossil fuel interests since returning to the White House. 

This includes comments made during his state visit last September. “I told it to him three days in a row. That’s all he heard: ‘North Sea oil, North Sea,’” Trump said, describing how he had hammered Starmer to relax tight regulations and high taxes on drilling firms. 

Those firms had begged him for help, Trump claimed. "[The U.K. government] take 92 percent of the revenues, so the oil companies say we can’t do it,” he said while at Davos. “They came to see me. ‘Is there anything you can do?’.” 

One industry figure, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive lobbying, said that last July, when Trump was visiting his Royal Turnberry golf course in Scotland, a copy of local Aberdeen newspaper The Press and Journal was smuggled into his hotel room. The issue, with its splash reading “Help us Mr. President” and Trump’s face on the front page, was a direct appeal to Trump to save the sector.  

But now the industry has decided the smart political move is to separate from its former talisman.  

“We will need oil and gas for years to come. Anything that reduces our dependence on imports has to be a good thing,” said a union figure connected to oil and gas workers.  

“We’ve seen how volatile the world is at the moment, particularly with someone like Trump in the White House, who does more 180s than an Olympic snowboarder.”  

“No. 10 is worried about the risk of Trump banning exports — they are now waking up to the fact that shutting down our own production and relying on friends is a risk, especially when one of our ‘friends’ is so mercurial,” argued a second industry figure. The White House has rejected claims it will ban gas exports. 

“We are creating a pathway where the U.S. would be serving our gas needs over the long term,” a third industry figure feared. They urged the government to reduce “over-reliance on LNG, be it from Qatar, South America or North America.” 

Greenies vs. the gas lobby  

The oil and gas lobby’s argument has gained some traction in Westminster.  

Labour MP Henry Tufnell, writing in The Sun newspaper last week, warned against relying on imports for the country’s energy needs. Drilling off the Scottish coast is a better alternative to “simply displacing the problem elsewhere and impoverishing our own communities,” he wrote. 

They have not won over green groups, however. “The oil industry is peddling a fantasy when it comes to the North Sea,” said Tessa Khan, boss of anti-fossil fuel campaigners Uplift. 

Julian Gallie, head of research at the polling firm Merlin Strategies, believes voters will look kindly on policies that remove U.K. reliance on Trump and other energy exporters. 

“Insulating U.K. energy from these shocks and reducing dependence on Trump or the Middle East would be a very popular policy. Whoever makes the stronger argument between renewables and fossil fuels for ending that dependency is key to success, but the public primarily wants an abundance of homegrown energy regardless of source,” he said. 

The government has responded to soaring energy prices and supply fears with another way of ducking Trump’s gas exports: Doubling down on its pledge to build ever more clean power like solar and offshore wind. 

“The events of recent days are yet another reminder that the only route to energy security and sovereignty for the U.K. is to get off our dependence on fossil fuel markets, whose prices we do not control, and onto clean homegrown power that we do,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said at the start of the crisis. 

“The only way to truly protect ourselves from these price spikes is to get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets,” a government spokesperson said. 

Even for those on the other side of the fossil fuel argument, Trump has found himself squeezed out. 

“The U.K. today is importing energy, more energy than any time in our history,” OEUK boss David Whitehouse told the BBC this week. He added: “I think in a volatile world, that’s the wrong place to be.”