EurOil: UK top climate advisor backs Labour plan to end oil and gas licensing

The UK’s most senior climate advisor has backed the opposition Labour Party’s plan to halt oil and gas licensing, in a move likely to further unsettle the North Sea industry and raise investment concerns.

John Gummer, who as Lord Deben chairs the statutory committee on climate change, told the Guardian he strongly supported Labour’s commitment. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said in January that oil and gas would play its part during the UK energy transition “but not new investment, not new fields, up in the North Sea, because we need to go towards net zero, we need to ensure that renewable energy is where we go next.”

“I welcome this policy, I am absolutely in favour and it is the right thing to do,” said Gummer, a former Conservative environment secretary in the 1990s. “I’m sorry this is not a common view to all parties.”

“I don’t understand how the government can ask other people not to produce more oil while supporting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea,” he continued. “That’s exactly what they are doing now – asking other people not to do what they’re doing.”

If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping Europe’s oil and gas sector then please click here for NewsBase’s EurOil Monitor.