DONALD Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill” has sent shivers down the spines of environmentalists across the world.
In Trump’s America, the consensus that the world must move away from fossil fuels towards a renewable future has been blown up.
But while that position may seem reckless, it serves a purpose in seeking to bring down energy costs for households and businesses who have suffered from sky-high bills for years.
The Scottish Government maintains its presumption against new oil and gas – a symbolic stance, given that energy is reserved to the UK Government – but the question is: for how long?
If Trump’s gamble pays off, politicians in Britain might start looking enviously across the Atlantic to Americans reaping the short-term benefits of cheap but dirty fuels.
One SNP source told The National that both the First Minister and his deputy, Kate Forbes, are softer on the issue than their predecessors.
Another high-level source added that while John Swinney still believed that renewables were “the future”, there are indications he is open to questions about how fast the transition must be and what role fossil fuels will continue to play.
One party source said that a full shift away from the presumption against new oil and gas was being held up in Cabinet by a “gang of four”, consisting of Shirley-Anne Somerville, Jenny Gilruth, Mairi McAllan and Mairi Gougeon.
They said that the SNP’s “new energy strategy has been due for months but delayed and delayed” by the four ministers who are “holding it up”.
One possibility that has been floated is reshuffling the “gang of four”, seen as holdouts of the Nicola Sturgeon era, out of Cabinet if it’s a decision that Swinney feels he really wants to take.
He could start feeling more heat on this issue as high profile job losses in the industry start to mount, with recent examples including Grangemouth and Harbour Energy in Aberdeen. Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee could also be promoted to break the “deadlock”.
A Scottish Government source described those claims as “bollocks and not true”.
The other area where the SNP may face pressure is on nuclear energy. The party is staunchly opposed to atomic power, but some within the party feel that stance is also softening.
A source said that the party’s opposition to nuclear power stemmed from its long-standing association with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which historically campaigned against atomic energy because it started as an offshoot of nuclear weapons programmes.
The source said: “The younger membership honestly couldn’t give two shits about this sort of stuff.
“The younger membership are quite distant from CND.”
With the UK Government under Labour continuing the Tories' pursuit of cheap nuclear power to bring down bills in the long term, the SNP’s stance may begin to appear “dated”, the source added.
But they predicted that any shifting stances would likely come further down the line, given that the party faces an election in a year’s time – one it is widely tipped to win, despite predictions from just over a year ago that Anas Sarwar may claim Bute House.
