Britain’s buried treasure and why Labour wants to leave it in the ground

Donald Trump knows Aberdeen better than most American presidents. He’s been active in the region since 2012, when he opened his Menie golf resort just up the coast. But when he returned this week and called the North Sea a “treasure chest”, he showed more economic realism than Britain’s entire political class.

Trump posted on Truth Social: “North Sea Oil is a TREASURE CHEST for the United Kingdom. The taxes are so high, however, that it makes no sense.

“They have essentially told drillers and oil companies that ‘we don’t want you.’ Incentivize the drillers, FAST. A VAST FORTUNE TO BE MADE for the UK, and far lower energy costs for the people!”

While Keir Starmer vows to block new drilling licences and maintains a punishing 78% marginal tax rate on North Sea profits, Trump urged the UK to “incentivise the drillers, fast”. He’s right. Beneath the waters off Britain’s coast lies one of the few remaining assets this country actually controls - oil and gas reserves that could help secure our energy supply, create jobs, and fund national renewal. But instead of tapping it, Labour is intent on strangling it.

This is not stewardship but sabotage.

North Sea production has declined over time, but it is far from exhausted. Industry estimates suggest up to 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil equivalent remain. New technologies and higher global prices have made even smaller fields viable. Norway sees this. So does the United States. But Britain, ever keen to play moral lecturer rather than serious state, prefers to import liquefied gas from Qatar and the US while treating its own producers as political scapegoats.

Labour defends this lunacy as “climate leadership”, but it’s really a form of elite virtue-signalling. Emissions don’t vanish just because production happens elsewhere. Outsourcing extraction doesn’t make Britain greener. It just makes it poorer.

The government is also robbing itself. In a country with staggering debt, broken infrastructure, and a flatlining economy, taxing an entire industry into retreat isn’t just foolish, it’s criminally negligent. Energy companies, already sensing the hostility, are diverting investment to friendlier jurisdictions. The jobs and tax receipts will follow.

Worse still, this self-imposed decline comes at a moment when energy is power. Global politics is once again driven by who controls the minerals, the pipelines, and the grids. China knows it. The US knows it. Even France knows it. Yet Britain, architect of the Industrial Revolution, is being governed by a class that blushes at the thought of drilling.

Trump may be bombastic, but he understands something Labour doesn’t: strategic resources should be exploited, not apologised for.

The North Sea is not a historical footnote. It’s an asset. A sovereign one. And every barrel left in the ground because of political cowardice is a gift to foreign autocrats and a curse on British workers.

It’s not just energy we have lost. It’s sovereignty.