The Scottish Greens are the only party “prepared to tell the truth” about the need to end new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, Gillian Mackay has said. The party co-leader said her opponents had to be “honest” with voters that further fossil fuel extraction in the North Sea would “do nothing to lower bills”.
The Greens have called for the windfall tax on oil companies to be “tightened to remove the loopholes” following “eye-watering profits”. Last week, BP announced that its profits in the first three months of the year more than doubled to £2.4 billion after a surge in oil prices triggered by the war in Iran.
Ms Mackay said: “New oil and gas fields will do nothing to lower bills and will only fast-track the climate crisis. We all need to be honest about that, but the Scottish Greens are the only party prepared to tell the truth. The SNP and Labour are pretending that new drilling is compatible with climate action, while the Tories and Reform are actively wanting to scrap Scotland’s climate laws.”
She accused other political parties of knowingly “misleading people” by claiming that the opening of the Rosebank oil field could lower bills. “Clean, green and locally produced energy is the safest, cheapest and best energy available,” she said. “Scotland’s future should be about fast-tracking the just transition our workers, planet and households need and deserve.”
She said it was “indefensible” that politicians, including First Minister John Swinney, were calling for “massive tax cuts for oil giants” despite recording “grotesque” profits. Instead of ending the windfall tax, she said, “we should be closing the loopholes and making it stronger to support people in fuel poverty and fund our transition to a cleaner, greener future”.
Offshore Energies UK urged parties to back an “all-energy” approach, while Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said “we still need oil and gas” and would assess whether it makes more sense to extract from UK waters than import. Scottish Conservative energy spokesman Douglas Lumsden said the Greens “would destroy every last job in oil and gas today, if they could”.
