Donald Trump has criticised the UK’s move away from oil and gas production, urging the Government to “open up” the North Sea and get rid of “windmills”.
The US president-elect said in a social media post that Britain is “making a very big mistake” on its energy policy.
On his platform Truth Social, Mr Trump posted a link to an article about Labour’s decision to increase taxes for North Sea oil and gas producers.
In October, the UK Government said it would raise a so-called windfall tax on companies drilling in the North Sea to 38% from 35%.
Labour wants to use the income from oil and gas taxation to raise money for more renewable energy projects.
Mr Trump wrote: “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!”
The president-elect was responding to a November announcement by US oil firm Apache, which said it will exit the North Sea.
Apache said the windfall tax has made its UK operations “uneconomic”.
However, oil companies have been making a gradual exit from the North Sea for decades as the basin slowly gets used up.
Production from the region peaked at 4.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 1999 to about 1.3 million today.
The UK Government wants to decarbonise the power system by 2030, meaning reducing the use of gas-fired power plants and replacing it with renewable energy.
The plan includes ramping up new wind turbine projects to quadruple energy generation from offshore wind over the next half-decade.
Mr Trump, on the other hand, has promised to increase US and oil and gas production when he re-enters the White House.
Apache, a Texan company, said in November that it will cease all production at its UK assets by December 2029.
It said this is “well ahead of what would have been an otherwise reasonable time frame”.
US oil giant ExxonMobil exited the North Sea in July last year.
And Shell and Equinor said they would combine their offshore oil and gas assets in the region into a new company.
Zoe Yujnovich, director of Shell’s integrated gas and upstream business, said at the time that the decision was partly because it is “no longer the prolific basin that it once was”.
A Government spokesperson said: “Our priority is a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, and we will work with the sector to protect current and future generations of good jobs.
“We need to replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain – which is the best way to protect billpayers and boost our energy independence.”
The North Sea Transition Authority were approached for comment.
