{"id":562478,"date":"2026-05-02T13:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T13:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/562478\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T13:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T13:54:10","slug":"swinney-very-concerned-by-reports-of-bp-considering-leaving-north-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/562478\/","title":{"rendered":"Swinney \u2018very concerned\u2019 by reports of BP considering leaving North Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John John Swinney hit out at the windfall tax on Saturday (Jane Barlow\/PA) (PA Wire) <\/p>\n

Scotland\u2019s First Minister<\/a> is \u201cvery concerned\u201d by reports that oil giant BP is considering leaving the North Sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg reported the firm had begun an internal review of its North Sea operations, though no final decision had been made.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Press Association on Saturday during a campaign stop in Glasgow, John Swinney<\/a> put the blame squarely on the UK Government<\/a> and its windfall tax on oil and gas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen the reports and I\u2019d obviously be very concerned about that,\u201d the First Minister said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will be driving this is the hostile taxation approach of the United Kingdom Government through the energy profits levy, and I\u2019ve told the Prime Minister to his face that the energy profits levy is causing significant economic damage to Scotland and the North Sea oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s accelerating the decline of the sector and I made it clear to the Prime Minister he should remove that energy profits levy, and the speculation about BP I think should prompt early action from the UK Government.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sir Keir Starmer<\/a>, the First Minister claimed, was distracted by pressure on his position as a result of the scandal surrounding the hiring and firing of former US ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, as with so many questions of the challenges that we face, the Prime Minister is distracted by his own failures and can\u2019t take the proper actions to protect jobs and employment within Scotland, and that\u2019s an example of the weakness and the failure of a Labour Government,\u201d Mr Swinney said.<\/p>\n

The reports come after UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband described BP\u2019s profits \u2013 which tripled in the first quarter of this year \u2013 in a now deleted post on social media as \u201cmorally and economically wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UK Government has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Swinney hit out at the windfall tax on Saturday (Jane Barlow\/PA) (PA Wire) Scotland\u2019s First Minister is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,3992,50,2798,192826,56,735,54,55],"class_list":["post-562478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-john-swinney","tag-news","tag-north-sea","tag-north-sea-operations","tag-uk","tag-uk-government","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}