Skip to main content
Oil & Gas

General Election 2024: Scottish views on the North Sea transition

12 June 2024

Polling in the weeks leading up the 2024 General Election by the consultancy True North was reported as showing 75% of people supporting North Sea oil & gas – this is a much higher number than would be expected from wider polling.  But the wording of the questions asked people to choose between imported oil and domestic oil (not oil vs renewable energy, which is consistently preferred as the best way to reduce the country’s reliance on importing foreign oil and gas).

Polling by Uplift, carried out at a similar time, found that North Sea oil and gas companies are widely considered by most respondents (70%) to benefit more from extraction in the basin than Scotland itself does currently.

Uplift found that SNP voters were the most concerned about climate change, and that 45% of SNP voters thought the UK Government should stop issuing new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea, compared with 31% in favour of new licensing.

Previous research with SNP voters also found higher support than opposition for ending licenses to drill in the North sea, and at a British level there’s much more support for renewables than oil and gas. But there isn’t yet a clear majority in favour of ending oil and gas exploration altogether – in Scotland or in Britain.

The latest from the Oil & Gas timeline:

Policy Insight 15th October 2024

Cumbria coal mine cancelled

In a reversal of the government’s decision to grant planning permission for a new coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria, the High Court ruled that the greenhouse gas emissions of the coal to be burned at the mine had not been taken into account when the decision had been made.

Instead, and echoing the claims of ‘net zero’ airports which don’t include the emissions from flights, consideration had only been given to the emissions released in building and operating the facility.

The High court decision came during the same month that the last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations was closed.

Climate Barometer Tracker 17th July 2024

Tracker data: Renewables better for energy security than fossil fuels

Climate Barometer Tracker data shows that renewable energy is seen as better for the country’s energy security than coal, oil and gas.

On reliability, the public are split, with 41% saying renewables are more, or as reliable as fossil fuels, and 40% of the public seeing fossil fuels as ‘more reliable’.

However, renewables are also seen as cheaper, and more popular with the public.

Opinion Insight 17th January 2024

Differences in support for oil and gas track political divides

A survey of 2000 people (in Novembers and December 2023) as part of the DeepDCarb project, has found mixed views on oil and gas expansion, and differences which track political divides.

30% were opposed to ‘Issue licences to permit new oil and gas expansion’, 30% neither supported or opposed new licenses (or didn’t have an opinion), and a slightly higher number (41%) were in support.

But bigger differences were apparent when the survey sample was split according to voting intention. Expansion was supported by two-thirds of both Conservative and Reform voters (and only opposed by one in ten), while Labour voters opposed expansion (41%) more often than they favoured it (34%). The majority of Green and SNP voters were opposed.

The findings mirror Climate Barometer data showing clear divides between left and right-leaning voters on oil and gas. But they also reflect patterns in wider research on the transition away from oil and gas, which indicate strong support for moving away from fossil fuels, alongside a willingness to accept the near-term need for domestic oil and gas.

  • Source: UK in a changing Europe
  • Authors: John Kenny, Andy Jordan, Lucas Geese, Chantal Sullivan-Thomsett and Irene Lorenzoni
  • Date: 17th January 2024
View Oil & Gas timeline now

Add Feedback