Posted on 01/23/2025 4:15:39 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
More than seven in 10 Scots back drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea to reduce the country's reliance on foreign imports, a survey has found.
In a blow for Sir Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, voters north of the border preferred meeting UK demand for fossil fuels from domestic sources rather than imports.
The UK has become increasingly reliant on overseas oil and gas imports with around two-fifths of the nation's energy needs being met by imports, down from the early 2010s but up from the 1990s.
The US, Norway, Qatar and Peru are among the largest sellers of fossil fuels to the UK.
The poll, carried out by Survation on behalf of consultancy firm True North, found that there was support for drilling from more than 70 per cent of voters, including almost three-quarters of those who backed Labour in last year's general election.
SNP and Tory voters also support it in large numbers.
The poll also found that just 24 per cent of Scots believe the windfall tax on energy companies has helped reduce household bills.
Just over a quarter (26 per cent) think the policy is effective at encouraging firms to move to renewables.
It was first introduced under the Conservative Westminster government and extended under Labour.
The Energy Profits Levy applied an extra tax on windfall profits, which came at a time when energy bills for consumers were surging while energy firms were recording record profits.
The UK Government has also pledged to deliver 95 per cent of power by clean energy by 2030.
According to Survation, only 35 per cent of respondents feel the target is achievable.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
And Starmer will flip them off and say, “Hey, you blokes voted for this.”
The Scottish North Sea has been dying for quite some time.
You will ALWAYS find drilling companies demanding that governments let them drill. They get paid to drill.
They don’t get paid to find anything. The production company is the one that cares about that. The driller will be told where to drill. If there is nothing there, the driller is not at fault.
So the next step is public proclamations that the only reason their drilling business is not doing well is the gubmint is preventing them from drilling.
Truth is, the seismic doesn’t show anywhere promising to drill so the big boys won’t pay for it.
The North Sea came online in the 1990s. That’s 30 years.
The first production in the North Sea was in the mid 1960’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil#Peaking_and_decline
“When it peaked in 1999, production of North Sea oil was 128 million tonnes per year, approx, 950,000 m³ (6 million barrels) per day, having risen by ~ 5% from the early 1990s. However, by 2010 this had halved to under 60 million tonnes/year, and continued declining further, and between 2015 and 2020 has hovered between 40 and 50 million tonnes/year, at around 35% of the 1999 peak. From 2005 the UK became a net importer of crude oil, and as production declined, the amount imported has slowly risen to ~ 20 million tonnes per year by 2020.”
It has been dying for decades. There is no fix for this. Drilling where there is no oil will make money for the driller but for no one else.
Neither Labour nor the SNP back drilling. If they want that, they had best vote Tory, or even better, Reform. They probably won’t though.
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