Revealed: How Big Oil is pushing Labour to drill the North Sea

Oil and gas lobbyists have met ministers 96 times since July 2024 as industry pushes to overturn Labour's North Sea drilling ban and scrap energy windfall tax.

By Lucas Amin, Adam Bychawski and Peter Geoghegan

Another day, another news story about Ed Miliband being “under pressure” over North Sea oil and gas.

The energy secretary was on the Today programme yesterday morning defending his refusal to follow Reform and the Conservatives’ demands to “drill, baby, drill”. His critics argue that the war in Iran and spiralling energy costs mean the UK should do everything it can to increase oil and gas production.

Numerous experts point out that more drilling in the North Sea will do “vanishingly little” to reduce energy costs for Britons. Why? Because the price of oil and gas in the UK is set by global markets.

But something has been missed in the endless North Sea headlines. While conflict in the Middle East has been the spark for the renewed interest in drilling, behind the scenes fossil fuel firms have been heavily lobbying ever since Labour returned to power.

A Democracy for Sale investigation has found that the main North Sea industry lobby group, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), has spearheaded a campaign to overturn the ban on new North Sea drilling and to end the windfall tax on energy profits.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation and our analysis of public records found that:

• Lobbyists for OEUK and its members, which include BP, Shell and a host of major oil and gas firms, have met UK and Scottish ministers 96 times since July 2024 – a rate of more than once a week.
  

• OEUK has developed a sophisticated playbook for influencing decision-makers in Westminster. This includes running the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the British Offshore Energy Industry, which gives the group access to MPs. The APPG does not declare OEUK’s financial support, saying it does not reach the reporting threshold.
  

• OEUK’s head of public affairs is a former Tory special advisor who has repeatedly met with parliamentarians. On at least two occasions, MPs have made parliamentary contributions echoing OEUK talking points a day after being briefed by the lobby group.

• Lobbyists have been pushing for more North Sea drilling. Two days after Labour’s election victory, BP vice-president Louise Kingham had a phone call with Miliband in which she called for “new exploration licenses” in the North Sea and also raised “concerns on the energy profits levy” introduced in the wake of soaring profits after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
  

• In a subsequent meeting with energy minister Michael Shanks, BP’s Kingham warned that the windfall tax would “kill off” BP’s investment in renewables – even as the company was already scaling back its energy transition plans. In another meeting, a Shell UK executive called for “continuous drilling in the North Sea.”

While Miliband has refused to backtrack on Labour’s manifesto pledge, the pressure on the energy secretary is growing. Rachel Reeves recently told BBC radio she would be “very happy” to back new North Sea exploration.

Tessa Khan, executive director of climate action organisation Uplift, told us that OEUK’s “noisy lobbying” was aimed at creating “a sense of the inevitable, in a bid to pressure the government into making a decision on drilling.”

“New drilling won’t make any difference to the price we pay for gas,” Khan added. “It is a distraction from the genuine solutions, like more renewables, and upgrading homes with solar power and heat pumps, which are the only way to insulate ourselves from energy shocks.”

At the end of 2025, the UK’s oil and gas industry was reeling. OEUK described it as the sector’s “worst year on record”: Reeves had confirmed the windfall tax would run until 2030, and campaigners had won a Court of Session ruling against permits for two new North Sea fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw. OEUK’s chief executive David Whitehouse wrote on LinkedIn that the decisions were “personal” and “not over”.

The industry’s focus shifted from policy to shaping the political debate, with OEUK listing “influence a change to the UK government narrative” among its priorities for 2026.

The influence campaign has been extensive. Ahead of November’s autumn budget, OEUK held a parliamentary reception attended by ministers and MPs. The government simultaneously softened its position on North Sea oil and gas, allowing new production on or near existing fields, so long as it doesn’t require new exploration.

Offshore Energy UK'’s pre-budget event was hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the British Offshore Energy Industry, whose chair is Mary Glindon, the Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend. Another member is the Conservative peer Colin Moynihan, who has previously called net zero a “children’s crusade” and owns shares in an offshore energy engineering firm.

OEUK has helped run the parliamentary group since its establishment in 1991. While the group lists OEUK’s external affairs lead as its secretariat, it has not declared this support as a financial benefit. Neither OEUK nor the APPG responded to our questions about this, but have previously said the arrangement was worth less than £1,500, the threshold for mandatory reporting.

In March, OEUK’s head of public affairs, former Conservative Cabinet Office SpAd Mark McClelland, briefed Labour MP Glindon and the Conservative Harriet Cross, on energy security, according to a LinkedIn post.

The following day, Cross called on Miliband to overturn his ban on new oil and gas licences during a Commons debate. Glindon then asked whether keeping the energy windfall tax risked reducing investment, an argument that OEUK has repeatedly made. Neither the parliamentary group nor Glindon responded to a request for comment.

Lobbyist briefing: Labour MP Mary Glindon

OEUK’s lobbying effort has been bearing fruit across the British media. “We’re sitting on a goldmine!” So WHY won’t Red Ed drop his Net Zero madness?”, the Daily Mail reported this month, citing OEUK research.

The Mail story was one of 788 stories in the British media in the past year to mention the trade group, according to press cuttings database Factiva.

OEUK has also targeted Scotland, where the future of the Aberdeen-based industry remains politically sensitive. It secured 44 meetings with MSPs and ministers after the Scottish government introduced a presumption against new offshore fossil fuel licences in 2023.

Over time, the Scottish government’s position appears to have softened considerably. By 2025, Scottish ministers were echoing industry concerns about an “unhelpfully polarised” debate at roundtable meetings with oil companies. First Minister John Swinney described the sector as “overtaxed”.

OEUK boss Whitehouse subsequently wrote to thank the first minister for his “willingness to engage directly” with the industry in September, according to correspondence released under freedom of information laws. Earlier this month, Swinney hinted that the Scottish National Party would support new drilling in the North Sea.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said that: “Ministers have previously made clear that people throughout the country would expect the Scottish Government to engage constructively with these industries, many of whom are involved in renewable energy in addition to traditional energy sources.”

​​An OEUK spokesperson said: “We are an apolitical organisation regularly engaging with parliamentary parties across the UK. Our sector contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy, supports thousands of good jobs and safeguards energy security while driving down carbon emissions. We will continue to represent it with pride.”

Commenting on our findings, Green MP Sian Berry said “the scale and depth of access OEUK has been given to government ministers is absolutely shocking”, adding that it would be “beyond reckless” for the British government “to be swayed by the fossil fuel lobby whose interests lie in profit but whose influence results in chronic dependence on volatile global markets, crippling energy insecurity, and devastating climate breakdown”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said: “The lesson of yet another fossil fuel crisis is the UK needs to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and onto clean homegrown power we control.

“Issuing new licences to explore new fields cannot give us energy security and will not take a penny off bills. We remain focused on supporting a fair, orderly and prosperous transition for the North Sea.”