Unlock the Watch House White newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Donald Trump has criticized the UK’s plan to pull out of North Sea oil and gas production, in the latest attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s government by the incoming US administration.
The president-elect said the UK was “making a very big mistake”, adding that it needs to “open up the North Sea” and “Get rid of the windmills”, in a post on his social media page. Social Truth”.
It was unclear what prompted the post, which included a link to an article from November in which APA Corporation, which owns US oil producer Apache, said it would shut down its North Sea operations by 2029 , warning of high taxes and environmental regulations that made them “uneconomic.” “.
Apache itself halted drilling in the North Sea in June 2023, before the Starmer government took office in July last year.
Trump’s digital intervention puts him directly at odds with one of the Labor government’s key policies, to move Britain off fossil fuels in the coming years.
The post shows the incoming US president’s willingness to weigh in on the domestic policies of other nations that was a feature of his first term in office, something that could further strain relations with the UK.
His intervention also follows widespread criticism of the Starmer government from Elon Musk, the Tesla chief and tech billionaire appointed by Trump to co-head a new waste-cutting department.
The posts from both men are likely to stoke concern within the UK about potentially strained US-UK relations when Trump is inaugurated this month for a second term as president.
Starmer has appointed former Labor minister Lord Peter Mandelson as the new ambassador to Washington, while the prime minister and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, have worked to forge ties with Trump and his allies.
The UK’s political consensus around tackling climate change has broken down, with the Conservative party – which introduced binding 2050 Net Zero targets under Theresa May – aligning more closely with Trump’s pro-fossil fuel stance.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who describes herself as a “net zero skeptic”, recently met with newly elected vice-president JD Vance, while Musk has urged people to vote for Nigel Farage’s UK Reform party , which has said it will take the UK to net zero emissions. the objectives.
Trump wants to boost U.S. oil and gas drilling and has said he would stop President Joe Biden’s key Inflation Reduction Act package on green energy subsidies.
His campaign has also said he plans to withdraw from the 2015 international Paris agreement to tackle climate change. He did so at the end of his first term in office in 2020, although the US was reunited months later under Biden.
The Starmer government has made divestment from oil and gas a key part of its agenda, citing the damaging impact of burning fossil fuels on the climate.
It plans to stop granting North Sea licenses for new oil and gas exploration and has increased the tax rate on oil and gas producers.
The Starmer administration is instead making a big push into renewable energy like wind turbines and solar farms. It wants to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030, as a step towards the UK’s wider, legally binding goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions across the economy to zero by 2050.
However, some critics have questioned the wisdom of curbing domestic oil and gas production, when both will still be needed for the next 25 years, albeit in declining volumes, even as the UK moves towards its target for the year 2050.
Downing Street declined to comment on Friday, but government officials stressed Labour’s position and longstanding arguments about its energy policies.
