Scottish Greens openly admit to ‘destroying’ Scotland’s oil and gas industry

Gillian Mackay hit out at other parties for not being ‘honest’ about the future of the North Sea as she talked up plans to stop drilling despite thousands of jobs being put at risk

15:37, 06 May 2026Updated 16:47, 06 May 2026

Scottish Green co-leader Gillian Mackay

The Scottish Greens have been praised for “openly admitting” to wanting to “destroy Scotland’s oil and gas industry”.

Social media users were quick to jump on Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay claiming her party was the only one “prepared to tell the truth” about the need to end new drilling in the North Sea.

The hard-left MSP hopeful hit out at her opponents claiming they had to be “honest” with voters that extracting more fossil fuels would “do nothing to lower bills”.

Ms Mackay’s party are calling for the windfall tax to be “tightened to remove the loopholes” following BP’s “eye-watering profits” after a surge in oil prices, despite the company mulling a potential exit from the UK continental shelf, due to the damaging business environment

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Ms Mackay said: “New oil and gas fields will do nothing to lower bills and will only fast-track the climate crisis.

“We all need to be honest about that, but the Scottish Greens are the only party prepared to tell the truth. The SNP and Labour are pretending that new drilling is compatible with climate action, while the Tories and Reform are actively wanting to scrap Scotland’s climate laws.”

The Scottish Greens want to stop drilling and push towards renewable energies

And she added: “We cannot drill our way out of the climate crisis, and ignoring the devastating consequences will only make things worse.”

Social media users praised Ms Mackay for at least being honest about her party’s desire to shut down the North Sea. One wrote: “She has a point. The Scottish Greens openly admit they want to destroy Scotland’s oil and gas industry. The SNP pretend they don’t, but everyone knows they do.” However, another user called her “hopeless”.

Offshore Energies UK, the sector industry body, urged parties to come together and back an “all-energy” approach, including oil and gas, while “building out Scotland’s world-class renewables”.

Scottish Conservative energy spokesman Douglas Lumsden said: “Scots already know the Greens would destroy every last job in oil and gas today, if they could. They’d turn the North Sea taps off and then blame the economic shockwave on Westminster, like they did with Grangemouth.

“The Scottish Conservatives are the only party in the Scottish Parliament to stand fully behind tens of thousands of Scots working in the North Sea. The only ones to back Rosebank when it was demonised by Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf. Anas Sarwar was frozen into inaction by Ed Miliband’s eco-zealotry and won’t defend this critical sector.

“And John Swinney has tried to pretend he’s softened the SNP’s presumption against oil and gas — but he’s fooling no-one, because that reckless policy remains in place.”