Kemi Badenoch has called for Britain to ‘get drilling again’ as she declared an oil and gas emergency in the North Sea.
The Tory leader warned that Labour’s net zero policies were endangering jobs and livelihoods and putting the sector ‘at serious risk’.
Urging the Prime Minister to champion homegrown energy, she told him to ‘find the backbone to ditch Ed Miliband’s net zero fanaticism’.
Her comments came as Sir Keir Starmer flew to the Cop climate summit in Brazil to repeat the Government’s commitment to clean energy.
Reacting to his visit, she warned that the policy was putting up bills for consumers and accused Labour of failing to put the ‘national interest first’.
It comes a month after Sir Tony Blair’s think tank urged Energy Secretary Mr Miliband to put lowering people bills ahead of rolling out green energy.
Mrs Badenoch also called for the windfall tax on the industry of 38per cent tax on North Sea oil and gas profits to be scrapped at the budget.
Speaking from Aberdeen, she said Britain was facing an oil and gas ‘emergency due to the anti-growth policies’ of Labour and the SNP.
She warned the offshore oil and gas sector ‘risks disappearing altogether’, triggering job losses and leaving the country reliant on overseas energy imports.
‘Scotland, and the whole United Kingdom, faces a growing oil and gas emergency thanks to Labour’s inability to put our national interest first,’ she said.
‘By the end of Labour’s first term in office, it’s not inconceivable that Scotland’s oil and gas sector will be at serious risk, with domestic production currently set to half by 2030.
‘That would be a shocking indictment of Labour’s energy policy, and a dangerous act of economic self-sabotage.
‘Enough is enough. Keir Starmer must find the backbone to ditch Ed Miliband’s Net Zero fanaticism, which is forcing up bills and driving away industry.’
North Sea oil and gas contributed £25bn to the UK economy in 2023 and directly, or indirectly, supported around 115,000 jobs, including 66,000 in Scotland.
However, around 75,000 jobs are thought to have been lost between 2016 and last year, and it is estimated the total declined by around 5,000 between 2023 and 2024.
Mrs Badenoch also called on the PM to ‘do what the economy needs’, scrap the energy profits levy and end the moratorium on new licences in the North Sea.
‘If the Labour government fails to act, we could be witness to the end of our domestic energy security as we know it,’ she added.
Mrs Badenoch called on the government to recognise that it believes gas will be a key part of the future energy mix to secure energy and lower bills to ‘deliver a stronger economy’.
The energy profits levy – the tax on the profits of oil and gas producers – was increased to 38per cent last year on an industry which is already struggling.
In a joint letter to Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Mr Miliband this week, trade bodies Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) and Scottish Renewables said it must be urgently replaced.
There have been a series of oil and gas closures in the UK this year, with Grangemouth, Scotland’s only oil refinery, ending operations in April, with 430 job losses.
The union Unite said political leaders had ‘utterly failed’ the workers and would face ‘electoral wrath’.
The area’s Labour MP, Brian Leishman, said he was ‘disgusted’ by the broken promises.
A Labour Party spokesman accused Mrs Badenoch of ‘doubling down on the same failed Tory energy policy that caused the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation’.
