Trump says UK must 'open up' North Sea oil and move away from wind power

US president-elect says Labour' government's plans to decarbonise are a 'mistake' as country moves away from oil and gas

US president-elect Donald Trump says UK must embrace North Sea oil and move away from 'windmills'. Reuters

Donald Trump has criticised the UK’s move away from oil and gas production, urging the UK 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 the Labour government’s decision to increase taxes on North Sea oil and gas producers.

In October, the government said it would raise a windfall tax on companies drilling in the North Sea to 38 per cent from 35 per cent.

Labour wants to use the income from oil and gas taxation to raise money for more renewable energy projects.

Mr Trump wrote: “The UK 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, off Scotland's coast.

Apache said the windfall tax has made its UK operations “uneconomic”.

However, oil companies have been making a gradual exit from the North Sea coast 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.

The plan includes building more wind turbine projects to quadruple energy from offshore wind over the next five years.

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.