Open the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US elections mean for Washington and the world
Donald Trump has criticized the UK's plan to move away from oil and gas production in the North Sea, in the latest attack against Sir Keir Starmer's government from the incoming US administration.
The president-elect said the UK was “making a very big mistake”, adding that it should “open up the North Sea” and “get rid of the windmills”, in a post on his social media site Truth Social.
It was not clear what prompted the publication of the post, which included a link to an article published in November, in which APA, which owns the American oil producer Apache, said it would end its operations in the North Sea by 2029, warning that taxes High prices and environmental regulations make it “uneconomical”. “.
Apache itself stopped drilling in the North Sea in June 2023, before the Starmer government took power in July last year.
Trump's digital intervention puts him at direct odds with one of the Labor government's core policies: transitioning the UK away from fossil fuels in the coming years.
The post indicates the next US president's desire to influence the domestic policies of other countries, which has been a feature of his first term in office, and which could further disrupt relations with the UK.
His intervention also follows multiple criticisms of the Starmer government by Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and tech billionaire appointed by Trump to co-lead a new waste-reduction administration.
The two men's posts are likely to raise concern within the United Kingdom about the possibility of strained relations between the United States and the United Kingdom when Trump is inaugurated this month as president for the second time.
Starmer appointed former Labor Minister Lord Peter Mandelson as the new ambassador to Washington, while the Prime Minister and David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, worked to try to establish relations with Trump and his allies.
Political consensus in UK Efforts have been divided over tackling climate change, with the Conservative Party – which introduced binding net-zero targets for 2050 under Theresa May – more closely aligning itself with Trump's pro-fossil fuel stance.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, a self-described “skeptic of net zero emissions,” recently met with Vice President-elect JD Vance, while Musk urged people to vote for Nigel Farage’s UK Reform Party, which he said would abolish net zero. Zero emissions in the UK. Objectives.
Trump wants to boost oil and gas exploration operations in the United States, and said he would stop the pioneering green energy support package in the inflation reduction law approved by President Joe Biden.
His campaign also said he intends to withdraw from the 2015 international Paris Agreement on tackling climate change. He did so at the end of his first term in 2020, although the US rejoined months later under Biden.
The Starmer government has made moving away from oil and gas a major part of its agenda, citing the harmful impact of burning fossil fuels on the climate.
It plans to stop issuing North Sea licenses for new oil and gas exploration, and has increased the tax rate on oil and gas producers.
Instead, the Starmer administration is making a big push into renewable energy such as wind turbines and solar farms. It wants to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030, as one step towards the UK's wider, legally binding target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions across the economy to net zero by 2050.
However, some critics have questioned the wisdom of throttling domestic oil and gas production when both will still be needed over the next 25 years, albeit in reduced quantities, even as the UK moves towards the 2050 target.
Downing Street declined to comment on Friday, but government officials highlighted Labour's long-term position and arguments supporting its energy policies.
