A new poll of environment campaign groups showed on Tuesday that four in five oil and gas workers offshore the United Kingdom, or 81.7 per cent, would consider leaving the industry.
But a leading representative body of the offshore industry, OGUK, said the report’s claims that offshore workers were not consulted in the policies in the energy transition were “misleading.”
Published by Platform, Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace UK, the report, ‘OFFSHORE: Workers’ Views on Industry Conditions and the Energy Transition,’ in which 1,383 offshore oil and gas workers were surveyed, represented 4.5 per cent of that workforce.
The survey showed that morale among the workers was currently low and that their biggest fear was job security.
It also showed that 42.8 per cent of oil and gas workers in the UK’s offshore had been made redundant since March 2020.
While job security was a top concern among oil and gas workers, they have a low level of confidence in the government’s support.
A total of 81.7 per cent of the workers polled said they would consider moving to a job outside of the oil and gas industry.
The least satisfactory element of the current terms and conditions for offshore workers was job security, and the biggest priority for moving to an alternative industry was also found to be job security, the survey also showed.
“The skills and experiences of oil and gas workers are essential to delivering an equitable and rapid transition to renewable energy. This requires engaging a representative section of the workforce in participatory policy-making, where workers are able to help determine policy, in addition to engagement with trade unions,” the authors of the survey wrote.
Last month, a survey for industry body Scottish Renewables showed that more than three-quarters of oil workers in Scotland considered re-training to find jobs in the renewables industries as 80 per cent of Scottish oil and gas workers believed that their careers could be impacted by actions being taken to tackle climate change.
