The Vested Interests Lobbying for North Sea Oil and Gas Expansion

In the wake of the fossil fuel crisis created by Donald Trump’s war in Iran, a host of influential figures and groups in the UK have been calling not for the rapid rollout of renewable energy, but a growing reliance on oil and gas.

They have been calling for ramped up exploration of the UK’s declining North Sea basin – and, as Carbon Brief has shown, their core arguments are based on falsehoods.

And, as it turns out, a large number of those lobbying for the UK government’s fossil fuel expansion either have close ties to the oil and gas industry, or to groups that deny basic climate science.

The Conservative Party

Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has been leading the campaign for the UK to award new North Sea oil and gas licences – launching a “Fuel Britannia” campaign this week that proposes more drilling and less support for renewable energy.

Badenoch has been hostile to clean energy throughout her time as Conservative leader. As DeSmog has shown, her party has frequently pilfered policies from Nigel Farage’s hardline, anti-climate party Reform UK, and has notably dropped its commitment to the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions goal.

However, the Conservative Party – including under Badenoch – has a long history of accepting donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers.

DeSmog revealed that Badenoch and her family spent a week at the home of Neil Record in February – a longstanding Conservative donor who has given more than £550,000 to the party. Record is a close ally of the current Tory leader, having donated to Badenoch’s 2024 leadership campaign and even gifted her the use of his London home as a campaign HQ.

Record, who’s a Telegraph columnist and holds senior positions at several right-wing think tanks, is a vocal opponent of clean energy development. He’s also the chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the climate denial Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”.

In recent years, a host of Record’s fellow climate science deniers have pumped money into the Conservatives. DeSmog research found that, in the two decades to 2024, the party accepted more than £7 million from those who refute evidence of man-made global warming and its solutions.

The party has also accepted donations from fossil fuel interests. Badenoch even launched her “Fuel Britannia” campaign at an oil rig owned by a Conservative donor, and she accepted money for her Conservative leadership campaign from a director of Chevron – one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.

“‘Fool Britannia’ would be a better strapline for Badenoch’s plan since it won’t help bill payers but will make oil giants richer,” said Paul Morozzo, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK. “It’s the fossil fuel industry’s wish list – ignore the environmental consequences and let them drill wherever they like, despite this doing nothing to reduce energy bills at home.”

Reform UK

Nigel Farage’s party has been a leading advocate of pro-oil politics for years, which has been turbocharged during the Iran crisis.

Reform has falsely claimed that more drilling would make “Britain energy independent once again” and “bring down bills”.

The party has been making these assertions while being funded by individuals with a vested interest in undermining the clean energy transition.

As revealed by DeSmog, the party received 92 percent of its funding between the 2019 and 2024 general elections from fossil fuel investors, major polluters, and climate science deniers. The party’s treasurer Nick Candy has claimed that the party is actively attempting to raise funds from oil executives, while several senior Reform figures have financial and non-financial ties to Gulf petrostates.

Farage himself is also a climate science denier. Speaking at the 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, he claimed he’s “not a scientist” but that it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. 

In reality, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.”

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

A network of right-wing think tanks and media outlets has also been pushing for more North Sea oil production.

A number of these organisations share donors and key personnel, while echoing the same pro-oil narratives.

For example, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – which has been lobbying for more North Sea exploration – has been heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch, whose media outlets have been repeating the same anti-climate lines.

As revealed by DeSmog, the IEA has received significant funding in the past from fossil fuel majors including BP and Shell. The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network of anti-tax, anti-regulation groups that have also been bankrolled by Conservative, climate denial donors.

In December 2025, DeSmog and Democracy for Sale revealed that Tory donors had pumped £7 million into Tufton Street groups since 2019.

These groups have adopted a new favourite energy specialist in recent months – Kathryn Porter, who has written reports for the IEA, and the GWPF.

Porter is a consultant for the fossil fuel industry. She claims to work for “businesses with projects across the electricity, gas and oil industries”, including “clients with conventional energy assets including gas-fired power stations, gas storage, upstream oil and gas production and [Liquefied Natural Gas]”.

Porter is also featured regularly on GB News, the anti-climate broadcaster. GB News is co-owned by the Legatum Group, an investment firm based in the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate, and Paul Marshall, whose hedge fund Marshall Wace had billions invested in fossil fuel companies as of June 2023.