We use cookies where necessary to allow us to understand how people interact with our website and content, so that we can continue to improve our service.
We only ever receive anonymous information, and cannot track you across other websites.
View our privacy policy
Since the 1970s, oil and gas has been extracted in the North Sea, generating energy, revenue and jobs on the East coast of Scotland. A managed transition away from oil and gas extraction in the North Sea is an inevitable part of reaching net zero, and public support for oil and gas as has long been dwarfed by support for renewables.
The imperative of reducing emissions (and ultimately winding down oil and gas production), and the near-term need for oil and gas in the energy mix, is a tension that politicians find difficult to navigate: new licenses continue to be granted (for now).
Central to this industrial transition are the views and livelihoods of the offshore workforce, to ensure that the transition is fair and ‘just’.
Separately, there have been faltering attempts at ‘fracking’ for gas underground, which have met with persistent opposition from local communities and the wider public.
How fast the transition away from fossil fuels happens will depend on political will and public opinion – this thread captures key insights on oil and gas.
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.
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.
The campaign groups Greenpeace and Uplift launched a legal challenge against Government plans to develop the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea.
The development is at odds with guidance from the Climate Change Committee, which has cautioned against the development of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea as inconsistent with the country’s net zero targets.
The COP28 conference ended with a call for a transition away from fossil fuels – although stopped short of calling for a phase out (or even phase down) of oil and gas. In the space between global net zero goals, and the continuing need for fossil fuels in the short term, politicians and campaigners are shaping the pace and ambition of the shift away from oil and gas. Find out what the UK public thinks about transitioning away from fossil fuels here.
YouGov polling in October 2023 (during the Labour Party conference) shows more support (50%) than opposition (31%) for decarbonising the electricity supply by 2030. Among Conservative party voters, the balance of support-opposition is reversed.
Whilst this level of support is lower than that generally seen for renewables (which is typically more than 70%), the 2030 target is a policy goal that some industry figures consider ambitious and will require – as analysis by Public First into the infrastructure required to decarbonise the grid has shown – ‘hitting the ground running’ if Labour takes power at the next election.
This map of onshore fossil fuel extraction sites shows several operating opencast coal mines and dozens of oil and gas sites across England and Wales with hundreds of operational wells between them.
The latest Climate Barometer tracker data (October 2023) shows that:
The Labour Party has pledged to create Great British Energy, a new, publicly-owned clean energy company to make the UK ‘energy independent’ and deliver 100% clean energy by 2030.
The BBC report that the controversial Rosebank offshore development off Shetland has been granted consent by regulators.
Located 80 miles west of Shetland, Rosebank is the UK’s largest untapped oil field and is estimated to contain up to 300 million barrels of oil.
Our tracker data shows that there’s more support for ending drilling in the North Sea than there is opposition – by a margin of almost 10%. However – in an example of a perception gap (explore more on this in our perception gap thread), at 76%, more Conservative MPs are strongly opposed to ending North Sea drilling – a higher percentage than Conservative voters (48%). Meanwhile, while Labour MPs are slightly more in favour of ending drilling than Labour voters (66% vs. 54%).
Polling by YouGov on behalf of Global Witness shows a lack of support for fossil fuel production, and a clear age gap in perspectives on oil and gas extraction.
Depending on which party (Labour or the Conservatives) is in power after the 2024 election, demographic differences like this may become even more prominent: a Labour government that secured the support of younger voters might be in a position to move significantly faster in terms of the social license to phase out oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
Polling by Greenpeace found almost nine in ten people (87%) want to see a loophole-free windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Separate polling by Green New Deal Rising found 60% support for this policy when given a list of options for funding overseas climate finance commitments (the second most popular was a wealth tax on the richest 1%).
For a long time, an argument made in favour of fossil fuels (and against supposedly ‘intermittent’ renewables) was that oil and gas could provide a secure, reliable source of energy.
But as familiarity with renewables (and confidence in them) has increased, so have perceptions of the reliability of solar and wind power. At the same time, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the instability that subsequently rippled through the global energy system, doubts are growing among the public that oil and gas are in fact secure, reliable sources of energy.
This is a significant shift – and could be what ultimately underpins a faster transition away from oil and gas. At a time of global insecurity, energy sources that can provide reliable (and ‘hoegrown’) energy become even more attractive. As Luke Tryl, UK Director at More in Common writes, message testing is showing renewables, not oil and gas, winning out in terms of being a secure and reliable source of energy:
There has been a shift in how we view energy security towards renewables – message testing on anti-oil and gas arguments finds strong support for the idea they’re getting more expensive – & particularly for Loyal Nationals (Red Wall voters) the dependence on Putin worries people.
Polling of SNP voters by the campaign group Stop Cambo found that 70% agree that the UK should ‘get off oil and gas as quickly as possible’ by ramping up efforts to improve energy efficiency and developing lots more renewable energy.
In an example of the ambiguity that phrases like ‘as quickly as possible’ can sometimes mask, though, whilst 45% supported a ban on new exploration for oil and gas, almost the same number (39%) did not. Overwhelming support for greater investment in renewables among the public does not directly correlate with increasing opposition to oil and gas extraction.
There is, though, widespread support for ensuring communities are ready and able to benefit from the transition away from oil and gas (62%) and that workers are given more assistance in the transition to green jobs (86%).
Making sense of public opinion on oil and gas
Renewables have long been far more popular among the public than any form of fossil fuel (coal, oil or gas). But the public’s relationship with fossil fuels, and how far and how fast to phase them out as part of the green transition, takes a bit of unpicking.