By David Sheret

There was a great old phrase people used to use in the pubs and social clubs of Ayrshire when I was growing up. When someone was getting carried away, talking too much, or failing to hear the contradiction in their own argument, somebody would eventually put their dominoes down, lean in, and cut through the pub’s white noise with a short, sharp line:

“Hey. Can yi’ hear yirsel’?”

Watching Ed Miliband on the BBC this week, I found myself thinking exactly that.

Not because he lacks conviction. Quite the opposite. He is one of the most passionate ministers in government, and there is something admirable in the clarity of his belief that the UK must change the way it produces and consumes energy. On the broad destination, I believe he is right. I think most reasonable people do. The UK cannot remain permanently exposed to every geopolitical tremor that rattles the oil and gas markets. It is right to build more clean power, right to move faster on infrastructure, and right to look for greater energy resilience at home.

But being right about the destination does not mean being right about the road. And that is where Miliband increasingly sounds as though he is arguing not with his opponents, but with the inconvenient practical implications of his own case.

Because if he listened, really listened, to the hydrocarbon industry, he would hear something that does not fit the tidy moral drama in which he so often casts this debate. Most serious people in the sector are not arguing with him about the need to change. They know change is coming. They know offshore wind, electrification, carbon capture and wider decarbonisation have to grow. In fact, some of the clearest evidence for that comes from the sector’s own leadership. David Whitehouse of Offshore Energies UK and Claire Mack of Scottish Renewables warned together last autumn that the UK’s energy future is at a critical juncture and called for a fair, managed transition that protects jobs, investment and supply chains. The Energy Skills Passport, backed by both industries and both governments, exists for precisely the same reason: because workers in oil and gas are not asking for the future to be cancelled, but for the future to be made navigable.

That is the point Miliband often seems to miss. The live argument is not really about whether transition should happen. It is about whether it is managed intelligently. It is about pace, sequencing and realism. It is about whether ministers recognise that this is a multi-layered, multifaceted challenge involving economics, jobs, skills, trade, security, infrastructure and public consent, not simply a contest between virtue and vice. Indeed, Miliband’s own government now says that ongoing investment and continued opportunities in oil and gas, particularly in the next few years, are fundamental to a fair and prosperous transition, and has established the North Sea Future Board to bring together oil and gas, clean energy, unions and local leaders to manage exactly that. Government, in other words, already understands institutionally what Miliband can sound reluctant to say politically.

Take offshore wind. When Miliband talks about accelerating deployment, or licensing and consenting, that is good in my book. The latest renewables auction did secure a record 8.4GW of offshore wind, alongside potentially billions in private investment and supply chain support. That matters. It should be welcomed. But it is no use pretending that licensing alone solves the problem. A wind farm does not build itself. It needs vessels, fabrication yards, subsea capability, ports, cables, engineers, technicians and all the support functions that sit behind a serious offshore programme. The Government’s own supply chain readiness study warned that meeting renewables ambitions would be very challenging without significant co-ordination to resolve constraints, while ORE Catapult’s supply chain survey found oil and gas firms often see delays, supply chain issues and weak support as barriers to moving into offshore wind. If the tonnage, the engineering capability and the support ecosystem are working around the world, or being drawn to markets offering clearer returns, ministers do not solve that by announcing another ambition.

And this is where the harder reality comes in. The UK is simply not at a stage where it can turn off hydrocarbons in the North Sea and assume everything else will somehow fall into place. Most can see that. You can see it from the point of view of jobs and skills. You can see it from the point of view of energy security. You can see it from the point of view of the cost of living. You can also see it in the hard numbers. The UK’s own energy statistics show net import dependency at 43.8 per cent in 2024, and identify Norway as the UK’s primary energy supplier. A country in that position should be very careful before talking itself into the belief that domestic offshore capability is a dispensable embarrassment rather than a strategic asset.

Of course, Miliband is right about one thing. More North Sea production does not operate like a magic wand over household bills. These are international markets. The price mechanism is global. But price is not the only test of value. An asset can matter because it sustains capability, tax base, exports, supply chains, influence and strategic leverage. Much of what is produced offshore is not consumed here in a neat one-to-one way. That does not weaken the argument. It strengthens it. It means the UK remains a trading nation with chips in the game, with assets that are valued, expertise that is sought after and standards that carry weight.

And let us say this plainly too. The North Sea industry is not some lawless relic being defended out of nostalgia. It is heavily regulated and, in many respects, world-class in safety, engineering and environmental performance. OEUK’s latest environmental reporting says greenhouse gas emissions from offshore production are down 34 per cent since 2018, methane emissions are down 57 per cent, and the total volume of unintentional oil and chemical releases fell 78 per cent between 2018 and 2024. Its supply chain report says the wider offshore energy sector supports more than 200,000 skilled jobs. Its latest safety reporting says there were zero fatal and zero reportable helicopter accidents in 2024, alongside no major hydrocarbon releases for the fifth consecutive year. None of that makes the sector morally perfect. It does make it strategically serious, technically capable and more advanced than the caricature too often served up in Westminster or Holyrood debates.

That also matters because the world is not helped if the UK simply offshores the problem. If hydrocarbons are still going to be produced globally, and they are, there is a strong argument that production should increasingly reflect the standards, safety culture and environmental discipline developed in mature basins like the UK Continental Shelf. The smarter path, as I have said many times previously, is not to hollow out a world-class offshore energy capability and then import more from elsewhere with a cleaner conscience and a dirtier global outcome. It is to use what we are good at, modernise it, globalise it, and integrate those strengths into the next phase of offshore wind, carbon management and emerging energy systems.

It is also important to say that no political party gets a free pass here. At one point or another, all major parties have taken positions that were dismissive, hostile or casually short term about the UK hydrocarbon base. None more so, in my view, than the SNP, who can sound distinctly selective in their memory on this subject these days. But this is not a slanging match, and it should not become one. This is one strand of a much more tangled and complex UK and Scotland governance story involving Westminster, Holyrood, licensing, planning, industrial strategy and years of muddled signalling. It is precisely because the picture is so complicated that glib moral certainty is not enough.

Ed Miliband is right to want change. He is right to push for cleaner energy. He is right to say that the UK cannot remain permanently at the mercy of volatile global markets. But if he listened more carefully, he might hear that the hydrocarbon industry is not really fighting him on that first principle. It is asking him to recognise that serious countries do not decimate world-class sectors before the replacement is ready. They manage decline intelligently. They protect skills. They keep options open. They build the new without pretending the old has already vanished.

That old Ayrshire line still endures because it catches something elemental in human nature: people can become so committed to an argument that they stop hearing its contradictions.

That was the impression Ed Miliband gave this morning. Not insincere, but deeply persuaded by the moral force of his own case. And that is precisely the danger. Conviction can begin to blur the line between what ought to be true and what still is.

He seems caught between virtue and reality, aspiration and necessity, speaking at moments as though the world has already become what he wishes it to be.

David Sheret, Chief Executive Officer, Sheret Energy Offshore - david@sheret.net

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Sheret Energy Offshore   l   KeyFacts Energy: Commentary