By Jim Mennie

The Tories like to present themselves as champions of North East Scotland. Yet issues like oil and gas show they definitively are not. But it’s not just oil and gas that exposes how they treat the voters of the North East as mugs.

In 2014, the then Westminster Tory-LibDem coalition government promised to make North East Scotland a world leader in carbon capture technology. The then UK Energy Secretary, and now LibDem leader, Ed Davey confirmed Peterhead as the location for the world’s first gas-fired carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility – backed up by a £100 million UK government investment. The Scottish CCS project would have captured emissions from Grangemouth and St Fergus, plus a new power station at Peterhead – and would be a crucial component in meeting our world-leading net zero targets.

The Scottish project was considered crucial in Scotland’s journey towards Net Zero, and offered workers in the North East an opportunity for a Just Transition into an alternative, greener industry – creating up to 15,000 jobs over the next three decades.

Davey said an independent Scotland would find it “more difficult to proceed” with the project, and insisted it was not a bribe to get Scots to vote ‘No’ in the independence referendum.

By the 2015 election the Tory manifesto boasted of being “the greenest government ever … committing £1 billion for carbon capture and storage. “

Oddly there was no specific mention of funding going to North East Scotland.

Even more brazenly, just months after the election, in November 2015, the UK Tory government broken that manifesto promise.

Fast forward to the 2019 election and the Tories are yet again promising something they promised to North East Scotland five years before.

At the Tory party conference, on 5 October 2021, Boris Johnson went on Scottish radio to suggest that the Scottish carbon capture and storage project was about to receive UK government investment.

And on 14 October 2021, Westminster Energy minister Greg Hands visited Aberdeen to talk about the potential for carbon capture and storage.

Then, only five days later, the Westminster government chose to reject funding for the Scottish Acorn project, diverting money to England instead.

This was despite the project being “shovel ready”, the most advanced and cost-effective out of all options.

It is the SNP as the Scottish Government which is investing in energy in the North East.

In January 2022, the Scottish Government awarded £8.5 million to several North East initiatives aimed at carbon cutting and in July 2024 confirmed a £2 million grant for the Acorn carbon capture project.

This comes on top of the £500 million invested in the inevitable transition from fossil fuels in the North East in order to protect the jobs and skills of the offshore industry.

In contrast the Westminster government the Tories want to keep making decisions for Scotland continues to treat the North East as an afterthought, with the latest Westminster government funding carbon capture in Teesside and Merseyside.

One thing is clear, whether it is oil & gas or carbon capture, the Westminster obsessed Tories think the heads of the voters of the North East button up the back.Update: 2025

UK Funding for Acorn – Eventual (Delayed) Progress While the original Tory-era decisions delayed the project for years, significant movement finally came in June 2025. As part of the UK Government’s Spending Review, £200 million in development funding was confirmed for the Acorn CCS project – the largest single commitment to date. This supports detailed engineering and commercial work toward a Final Investment Decision, positioning Acorn (now a Track 2 cluster) to store up to 5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2030 and support thousands of jobs. It forms part of a broader £9.4 billion CCUS capital package and up to £21.7 billion over 25 years.

This shows eventual progress under the subsequent Labour government, albeit years later than the repeated Tory promises from 2014–2021.

Balancing Perspective: Tory Support for Oil & Gas in the North East

Critics rightly highlight broken CCS promises, but it is fair to note that Conservative governments (particularly 2010–2024) positioned themselves strongly as defenders of the North Sea oil and gas sector – a major employer and economic driver in the North East. Under the Sunak administration, hundreds of new North Sea licences were granted in 2023 to boost domestic energy production and security, with explicit support for continued exploration.

Scottish Conservative voices have consistently opposed the SNP’s “presumption against” new fields and pushed for maximising extraction to protect regional jobs. Many North East voters valued this pro-oil stance amid the energy transition, seeing it as safeguarding immediate livelihoods while CCS was meant to bridge to the future.

Official Sources and References for Credibility

• UK Government CCUS policy and cluster updates:

gov.uk Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage collection

(includes 2023–2025 cluster sequencing and Spending Review details).

• Scottish Government Just Transition Fund for North East & Moray: Official £500 million 10-year commitment evaluation reports (2022–2025), confirming early investments and ongoing reviews.
• The Acorn Project official site and CCUS Association updates: Detailed history, funding milestones, and project status (

theacornproject.uk

The burning question now is; CAN YOU ‘TRUST A TORY’ NOT TO U-TURN?