Scottish Labour has come out in support of the UK's oil and gas sector, telling a London conference that further extraction from the North Sea oil is better than importing from despotic regimes.
The party's Holyrood leader Anas Sarwar said that “ending our reliance on volatile markets controlled by dictators like Putin” meant “maximising our existing resources” in the North Sea.
Speaking at the New Statesman’s Igniting Growth conference in central London, he said there were “existing fields” where hundreds of billions of pounds of oil and gas could be extracted.
“Reliable growth not only demands cheaper energy, but a changed world demands more security of supply," he said.
“Our long term energy security must be based on the clean power of the future, that includes new zero carbon nuclear energy, and ending our reliance on volatile markets controlled by dictators like Putin.
“But that also means maximising our existing resources as part of a managed transition that supports workers and households.
“There are existing fields which can yield hundreds of billions of value for our economy, supporting growth and delivering revenues to support our public services.
“Put bluntly if the choice is more expensive imports from despotic regimes like Russia or new oil and gas, then the answer must be oil and gas.
“This is a generation defining moment, we must rise to it to deliver the security and prosperity our country needs.”
The UK gets about three-quarters of its total energy from oil and gas, a proportion that is still expected to be 50% in the mid-2030s and around 20% in 2050.
Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), which represents the industry, has previously said the UK would need to import 80% of its oil and gas within a decade if more new fields were not approved.
Douglas Lumsden, the Scottish Tories’ Shadow Net Zero and Energy Secretary, said: “Anas Sarwar has some brass neck posing as a friend of North Sea oil and gas when the UK Labour Government he supports is determined to kill the sector.
“Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband have recklessly vowed to prevent any new oil and gas licences being granted, in the full knowledge that it will make us more reliant on imported fossil fuels.”