Trump hits out at UK over North Sea oil barriers

US President Donald Trump has hit out at the UK’s green energy policies and claimed mass migration had left Europe unrecognisable.

He told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “between immigration and energy – if they don’t change, bad things will happen to them”.

In his speech at the gathering, Trump criticised Sir Keir Starmer’s policies on North Sea oil and gas.

Trump, who has repeatedly denounced what he calls the green energy “scam”, said the UK Government had made it “impossible” for oil firms to exploit North Sea reserves.

He said: “The United Kingdom produces just one-third of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999 – think of that, one-third – and they’re sitting on top of the North Sea, one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don’t use it, and that’s one reason why their energy has reached catastrophically low levels, with equally high prices.

“High prices, very low levels. Think of that – one-third and you’re sitting on top of the North Sea.

“They like to say, ‘Well, you know, that’s depleted’. It’s not depleted. It’s got 500 years. They haven’t even found the oil, the North Sea is incredible.

“They don’t let anybody drill, environmentally, they don’t let them drill. They make it impossible for the oil companies to go. They take 92% of the revenues.

“So the oil companies say, ‘We can’t do it’.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokeswoman said: “We will pursue an energy policy that is right for our national self-interest.

“For the UK, this means getting off the fossil fuel rollercoaster, which makes us a price taker, and instead having clean homegrown power which we control.”

Environmental campaigners criticised Trump’s comments.

Greenpeace UK’s Lily-Rose Ellis said “Trump’s knowledge of North Sea oil and gas amounts to a tottering pile of lies”, adding: “The UK Government can safely ignore advice from a climate denier bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry.”

Friends of the Earth’s Mike Childs said: “The only people who benefit from backtracking on climate action are the polluters, billionaires and powerful vested interests profiting from fossil fuels.”

Guy Prince from the Carbon Tracker think tank said: “Claims that the UK has 500 years of North Sea oil are simple wrong. The UK has already produced around 94% of the economically recoverable oil in the North Sea.

“Cumulative production is about 48 billion barrels to date, with roughly 2.9 billion barrels of remaining probable reserves. At current production rates of around 400 million barrels a year, that equates to roughly seven years of output, not anything closer to 500.”

In an occasionally rambling address, Trump highlighted the achievements he claimed to have made in his first years in office since returning to the White House.

But he was scathing about Europe, deepening the transatlantic divides that have opened up over trade and his goal of taking over Greenland.

He told the audience in the Swiss Alps that countries in Europe are importing “entirely different populations from faraway lands”.

He said: “Certain places in Europe are not even recognisable, frankly, anymore. They’re not recognisable.

“We can argue about it, but there’s no argument: friends come back from different places – I don’t want to insult anybody – and say ‘I don’t recognise it’, and that’s not in a positive way, that’s in a very negative way.

“I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it’s not heading in the right direction.

“In recent decades, it became conventional wisdom in Washington and European capitals that the only way to grow a modern Western economy was through ever-increasing government spending, unchecked mass migration and endless foreign imports.

“The consensus was that so-called dirty jobs and heavy industries should be sent elsewhere, that affordable energy should be replaced by the green new scam, and that countries could be propped up by importing new and entirely different populations from far away lands.”