The sun doesn’t set in Aberdeen until past 10pm in the summer. The long twilight that bathes the city is rather like the slow fade that Scotland’s “oil capital” has experienced over the last decade as the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy relies, has wound down.
“Aberdeen used to be the place to be,” says Alison, a taxi driver in her late fifties who has picked me up at the airport. “But now it’s a ghost town. Just look at Union Street…it’s really sad what’s happened.”
Donald Trump – who has long encouraged the US and allies to “drill, baby, drill” to ramp up fossil fuel production – seems to share Alison’s view. Last week, the US President said he had given outgoing UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “some pretty good advice”.
“I said open up the North Sea, go to Aberdeen, which was the hottest city of the whole continent. It was the oily city of Europe, and they closed everything. It was terrible. I couldn’t believe it.”
In November 2025, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband fulfilled a Labour Party manifesto commitment to stop issuing new oil and gas licences in the North Sea. This means new drilling is banned, but existing operational sites will continue as their natural lifespan allows.
Labour’s resolve was tested in March 2026 when Trump decided to bomb Iran, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a surge in oil and gas prices. However, Miliband remained firm that a transition to renewable energy was the right call for Britain’s long-term energy security.
‘To Let’ signs are visible everywhere in Aberdeen as retail and office space has been left empty (Photo: Sherina Bhundia/The i Paper)In truth, despite what Trump says, Aberdeen’s decline predates Labour’s landslide election victory in 2024.
On Union Street – Aberdeen’s mile-long granite-lined main commercial strip – which runs through the city to its North Sea-facing harbour, dozens of shops are shuttered, with some reportedly empty for almost 10 years.
Aberdeen’s high street is by no means the only one in Britain to be suffering, but here, a very specific cause for this decline can be traced back to 2014. In the mid-2010s, a global oil crash saw the price of oil plummet to less than half of its cost today at $23 a barrel and the city lost an estimated 9,000 jobs in the sector over the next decade.
“The town is very anxious right now,” a young man in his thirties who grew up here, moved away and is currently visiting his parents says outside a coffee shop on Union Street. “There have been oil slumps before, but this time it feels like it could really be the end.”
Closer to Norway than it is to London, Aberdeen – Scotland’s third largest city with a population of around 230,000 – feels far removed from Westminster. However, as Labour has come under heavy political pressure over its stance on the North Sea in recent weeks, it has affected the mood here.
Regeneration works take place on Aberdeen’s Union Street (Photo: Sherina Bhundia/The i Paper)While all eyes were on Andy Burnham’s by-election victory against Reform UK in Makerfield, which precipitated Sir Keir Starmer’s tearful resignation outside Downing Street, the Scottish Conservative Party was celebrating its first by-election win in more than 50 years. In Aberdeen South, Tory MSP Douglas Lumsden managed to win the seat vacated by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn.
In the run-up to this victory, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch visited Aberdeen to boost a campaign heavily focused on reinvigorating the area’s oil and gas industry and highly critical of Miliband’s net-zero agenda. The Tories pledged to ease tax burdens and regulations on the sector, which many in the industry feel has caused heavy job losses.
Reform has also waded in, arguing (incorrectly according to experts) that maximising fossil fuel extraction in the North Sea will lower Britons’ energy bills.
“I wish everyone would stop playing politics with Aberdeen,” another young man in his early forties says outside an Oxfam charity shop in the town centre. “The Tories went big on oil in their campaign, and I thought it was cynical. Everyone’s got an opinion, haven’t they?”
Colin, 62, worked in oil and gas in Aberdeen for 30 years. ‘I think we should be drilling,’ he says (Photo: Sherina Bhundia/The i Paper)Indeed, Burnham himself has now suggested he has also got a view. In his first major speech outlining his economic plan, the probable next prime minister said he would bring forward “powers for areas undergoing industrial transition”, naming Aberdeen as one.
Great British Energy (GB Energy), the Government’s publicly-owned company, set up to drive investment in clean, home-grown energy such as green hydrogen and offshore wind aimed at lowering bills and fostering energy independence, is already headquartered in Aberdeen.
However, critics and some Labour MPs have questions about what a plan for growth would look like under a Burnham government if it continues its policy in the North Sea.
People in Aberdeen feel defensive and conflicted. There is nostalgia for the oil industry’s heyday, but it is tempered with realism.
Colin, 62, who worked as an oil platform inspector for 30 years, says Aberdeen’s problem is not straightforward.
North Sea oil was first discovered in the 1960s and led to an economic boom in the city (Photo: Getty)“For sure, we need to move away from oil and plastics [which oil plays a big role in the production of] eventually, but we are not there yet. The world isn’t ready.
“So, in the meantime, we should keep local employment [in the industry], and I think we should be drilling.”
Colin points out that Britain imports oil from other countries in the world and says he “doesn’t understand why any government would not want to utilise what natural resources it has”.
He adds: “I think Andy Burnham knows [new exploration] is going to happen anyway when Labour are out of power, so I think he will allow Aberdeen to drill – if it is going to happen anyway why wouldn’t you want to do it as carefully and sustainably as possible?”
In contrast to Britain, Norway is currently actively expanding drilling operations near the UK border and has reopened dormant gas fields such as Albuskjell and Vest Ekofisk.
Oil and gas industry support vessels in Aberdeen’s harbour (Photo: Sherina Bhundia/The i Paper)Tone Langengen, senior energy policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute, said Britain needed to be realistic about its continuing reliance on oil and gas.
She said: “New drilling won’t bring down household energy bills, because those are set by international markets. But the UK will continue to rely on oil and gas for many years to come, regardless of whether we produce it ourselves.
“If demand remains, it makes sense to produce as much of that supply domestically as possible.
“The choice isn’t between using oil and gas or not using it, but about where it comes from while the transition takes place.”
In Aberdeen’s harbour, huge oil and gas support vessels lie in wait as the city’s future is debated by politicians.
Fraser, 23, is visiting his girlfriend’s parents, one of whom works in oil and gas, for a few days and contemplating where to go for dinner. The decision is between ramen and Nando’s – “an impossible choice,” his girlfriend jokes.
“It’s like the impossible choice with oil and gas,” Fraser says. “We are importing oil, which is negative, and we have climate goals for good reason, but the oil has got to come from somewhere until we can fully transition to renewables.”
“Are we going to drill our own oil? Are we going to import someone else’s? Are we going to burn alive in 800 years? Nobody seems to know!”
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