Kemibedenok calls for an end to lifting taxes on oil and gas companies

Conservative leader Kemi Badenok said he is seeking an end to windfall taxes on oil and gas companies and that new licenses will need to be issued for drilling in the North Sea.

Badennock, who attended the Scottish Conservative Conference in Edinburgh, said the tax, known as the Energy Profit Tax, should be disposed of before the expiration of the current 2030.

The taxation was brought by the previous conservative British government, but Badenok said her party had made this wrong.

Opposition politicians criticized Badenok’s comments, describing them as “not in contact.”

The Tory leader also claimed that Scotland had “rejected” under left-wing parties, and that the SNP had been wasted millions of “independence propaganda.”

Energy profits were introduced in May 2022 after a sharp rise in profits as oil and gas companies surged due to the rapid rise in energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine.

The current scheme has since been expanded and increased to end in 2030.

The oil and gas sector says the windfall tax is curbing investments.

Badenok told the Conservative Congress in Scotland that she would “stoop for our oil and gas” as part of renewing her party.

She argued that blowing taxes to the sector were wrong because “we had no windfall of taxes for months.”

The Tory leader said, “One night strike in the Middle East reminds us how important it is that we can rely on our own energy security, our own natural resources.”

Badenok said the extension of the workers’ tax was “killing the oil and gas industry.”

To applause from the meeting, she said the Tory government would “repeat the ban on new licenses.”

Russell Findlay, a conservative leader in Scotland, previously said it would be a “complete act of self-harm for the citizen” that would not continue drilling oil and gas in the North Sea.

He told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland Programme:

“The Edinburgh SNP is completely hostile to all forms of new exploration, exactly like Stort and Ed Miliband of Sir Keel in London.

“They want to leave this oil and gas in the North Sea and import it from even further afield. That makes no sense at all.”

In response to Simon Francis’ Bardennock, the Fuel Poverty Union’s ultimate goal, he said:

“On the other hand, the average household energy bill remains hundreds of pounds, or hundreds of pounds higher than before the energy crisis began.”

SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said, “The Tories destroyed our economy, hosted the rise in household bills, and tore Scotland from the EU against our will.”

Jackie Baileydame, assistant leader of Scottish Labour, claimed that Tories were on the side of oil and gas companies “not Scotland.”