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The government has announced the approval of the Jackdaw North Sea gas field, and is set to make a call about the Rosebank oilfield soon.
The prominence of the Jackdaw and Rosebank decisions have seen a flurry of polls around public views on North Sea oil and gas, many with contradictory sounding results. More in Common polling for example showed that 55% of Brits are supportive of drilling at Rosebank and Jackdaw, while another poll by Savanta for E3G shows that a third of voters would be less likely to vote Labour if North Sea drilling is green lit.
So, do people support it, or don’t they?
The public are split on North Sea gas, though few want it to end immediately
Climate Barometer tracker data on public support for ending North Sea drilling shows that the public are fairly evenly split between support, opposition, and ‘neither’, although ‘support’ is consistently the most popular position. This three-way split across the population has been fairly stable across the four years since our polling began.
This kind of response (especially the ‘neithers’) suggests a lack of deeply-rooted views, which also means that differently worded questions across surveys can produce very different looking results (more on this below).
Political allegiances play a major part in views on North Sea oil and gas drilling too. A large majority of Green supporters (69%), and around half of Lib Dem (46%) and Labour supporters (46%) support ending drilling.
On the other side, Conservative and Reform supporters are more likely to reject the idea of ending drilling for gas in the North Sea, with slight majorities (51% and 55% from each party respectively) opposing the policy.
Across the board, few support an immediate closure of, or end to drilling for oil and gas, shown in our polling, and also YouGov’s tracker.
What about Scotland?
These decisions are closest to home for Scotland, where, according to More in Common there also seems to be majority support for approving new licenses for more drilling at Rosebank and Jackdaw.
Diving deeper into More in Common polling in Scotland, this is highest among older age groups and Scottish Conservatives, and lowest among young people aged 16-24, where views are divided fairly evenly. Our visualisation of this polling data is shown below.
When pitted against one another, the same survey also shows that a majority of Scots would prioritise Scottish oil and gas, at the expense of Scotland’s net zero goals, with 61% saying it is “important that Scotland has more ability to produce its own oil and gas, even if it makes achieving net zero by 2045 more difficult”.
Zooming out
But that’s also not the whole story.
The details around North Sea oil and gas are opaque, and public views can be based on misunderstandings and assumptions about the impacts of increased drilling on domestic energy, and levels of ‘support’ reflect this.
For example, an Ipsos poll from earlier this year showed that 58% of Britons think issuing new licenses in the North Sea would reduce UK’s energy dependence, and 47% thought it would reduce their energy bills – both claims debunked by Carbon Brief.
The answer also depends on how the survey question is worded. Some wildly different percentages have been thrown around about public support for Jackdaw and Rosebank, and most media stories do not link back to the original survey, so we don’t know how the questions were framed. As we wrote a few years ago, when it comes to North Sea oil and gas, framing matters.
Despite this, there are some clear lines to be drawn. The public still prefers renewables to oil and gas; they see it as cheaper, more popular, and better for the country’s energy security.
This is the case in Scotland too. Uplift polling shows that 63% of Scots think that more investment in renewables and energy efficiency measures are more likely to result in Scotland having a ‘secure and affordable supply of energy in the future’, compared to only 26% who say this for more investment in North Sea oil and gas drilling.
The same survey also found that a clear majority (57%) think that clean energy industries are more likely to provide the most opportunities for Scotland’s energy workers in the next 5 years than the oil and gas industry (29%).
So what does it all mean?
Perhaps the question to ask is not ‘do people support North Sea oil and gas’, but ‘what do the public want from their energy system?’.
The ‘truth’ in these polling numbers lies in between the lines: what people want are lower bills, a stable energy supply, and future-proof jobs for people currently working in the oil and gas sector. They also want to protect nature and wildlife, and majorities support a wide range of climate policies.
In this case, it is not an ‘either/or’ for the public, but a ‘yes, and’.
Yes, the public cares about climate change and the environment. Yes, they prefer renewables to fossil fuels. And they are concerned about energy costs and supply. And they are concerned about jobs for those working in fossil fuel industries. And they want the energy security that ‘homegrown’ energy (fossil or renewable) is believed to bring.
Get in touch if you’ve got or you’ve seen any further polling on perceptions of oil and gas, and drilling in the North Sea: this is a story that only makes sense when you look beyond individual surveys.
Latest Climate Barometer tracking finds that people in Scotland and London are most likely to have seen measures to address climate change in their local area.
As highlighted in the chart below, people in Scotland are most likely to have noticed
Londoners are similar, but also noting more EV infrastructure, traffic reduction measures and flood defences. Londoners are also by far the most likely of all regions to have seen heat reduction measures implemented in their area.
Those in the North of England, Wales, England’s East and the Midlands, and the South are more likely than those in Scotland and London to say that they have seen ‘none of the above’ in their area.
This data points to emerging evidence for gaps and inequalities in the regional implementation of climate measures, building on other Climate Barometer tracker data showing income gaps around the same measures.
Policies proposed to address climate change are varied in scope. Our latest Climate Barometer tracker looks at whether many of these policies are seen by the public as ‘climate policies’ or whether they are believed to be targeting other issues.
Some policies are seen as primarily addressing climate change:
Many policies that involve improving the natural environment are seen as ‘protecting nature’ rather than tackling or responding/adapting to climate change:
Other urban infrastructure and design policies tend also to be seen as primarily addressing other issues:
And policies aiming to target the wealthy/ polluting groups are also less likely to be seen as outright climate policies
Policies often have multiple aims and goals, and whether policies are seen as ‘climate’ policies is not a problem in and of itself. In many cases, a climate policy being seen as a cost of living or nature protection measure may mean a wider section of society see its benefits. Crucially, it is important to be aware of how various policies are being ‘read’ by the public, and whether or not the aims of the policy are being understood.