TORY leader Kemi Badenoch has been accused of “reckless ignorance” after vowing to extract every last drop of oil and gas from the North Sea.
Badenoch is set to use a speech in Aberdeen on Tuesday to call for maximum extraction and a complete move away from Net Zero policies.
She will also call for the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) to be renamed the North Sea Authority.
It comes after Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has reportedly been wooing fossil fuel firm bosses.
The Tory leader’s comments have been condemned by environmental campaigners in light of rising temperatures and that the North Sea itself is a declining basin.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, MP for Aberdeen South, said the Tories are “denying reality” by moving away from an energy transition.
Ahead of her speech next week, Badenoch has said that the UK is leaving “vital resources untapped” while Norway extracts “from the same seabed”, citing Office for National Statistics (ONS) data that suggests economic growth is down because of falling oil and gas extraction.
“We cannot afford not to be doing everything to get hydrocarbons out the ground,” she said.
“Britain has already decarbonised more than every other major economy since 1990, yet we face some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. This is not sustainable, and it cannot continue.
“That is why I am calling time on this unilateral act of economic disarmament and Labour’s impossible ideology of Net Zero by 2050.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine has only underscored that our energy supplies are a matter of national security.
“We are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea.”
The Tories plan to completely overhaul the NSTA which oversees the issuing of licences, dropping the word transition and giving it a simple order to extract the maximum possible amount of fossil fuels.
The party would also seek to “rid the industry of its current Net Zero mandate”, which are also attached to the issuing of new oil and gas licences.
The Tories said that the “sole and only metric” operators would be judged on would be mass extraction.
Areeba Hamid, Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, said: "Planning to unleash more North Sea drilling after another summer of record heat and wildfires isn't just reckless ignorance of the threat posed by the climate crisis – it's also bad economics.
“More oil and gas from the North Sea won't make a dent on energy bills or create secure employment – the oil and gas industry was losing jobs even when new licences were handed out.
"If we want affordable bills, good jobs and a boost to the economy, we must end our dependence on volatile gas markets controlled by autocrats like Putin, invest in homegrown renewables and insulate our energy-wasting homes."
Rosie Hampton, oil and gas campaigns manager at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “Politicians calling for unlimited fossil fuel drilling are doing the bidding of oil company lobbyists because nobody else considers it a credible approach.
"The ‘drill baby drill’ approach will kill people by worsening climate breakdown."
She added: "By dropping climate commitments, politicians are abandoning their responsibility to protect the public from the extreme weather and disasters that are mounting both at home and across the world.”
Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said that the Tories plans were “reckless” and would be removing rules that are the “bare minimum” holding the industry to account.
“Badenoch and the Conservatives are well aware that the North Sea is a declining basin – this is a geological reality,” she said.
“Chasing the last drops of oil and gas while dismantling net zero commitments would be a dangerous distraction from building the clean energy system that could actually cut bills and create jobs, ignoring the enormous opportunities that can be found in the UK’s immense reservoir of offshore wind resources.”
“A managed energy future that actually protects jobs, the economy and security of supply is really not that hard to envisage or deliver - but now both Government and opposition parties in Westminster seem determined to prevent that from happening.”
Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer said: “The good news for workers in the North East and for our planet is that Kemi Badenoch and the Tories will be nowhere near government anytime soon, so won't be implementing these truly mad policies.
“The bad news is that Kemi isn’t coming up with these ideas on her own; they are simply imitations of Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s climate denialism.
"This backwards thinking would destroy any chance of halting the climate crisis, massively increase household energy bills and risk over a hundred thousand jobs in Scotland."
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “We are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.”
