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Kemi Badenoch on Wednesday continued her “fuel Britainnia” campaign to extract “every last drop” of oil and gas from the North Sea, by visiting a company whose owner has donated more than £250,000 to the Conservatives since she became its leader.
Badenoch, who has promised to scrap what she has described as the Government’s “crazy” plans to reach Net Zero by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, was pictured visiting the Well-Safe Protector Oil Rig in Aberdeen.
Well Safe’s non-executive chairman and majority shareholder is Alasdair Locke, who has donated more than a quarter of a million pounds to the Conservative party since Badenoch became its leader in November 2024.
Badenoch has spent the past week campaigning for the Government to drop its plans to reach Net Zero, whilst expanding drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, despite admitting on Sunday that it would not “directly” reduce consumer bills.
Pushed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, the Conservative leader admitted that handing new licences for drilling “isn’t going to go directly onto people’s bills” but suggested that it would boost the economy and jobs.
Her campaign began after she accepted a £7,500 retreat at the home of another Conservative donor who chairs the climate-denying ‘Net Zero Watch’ lobby group.
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Neil Record, who has questioned the scientific consensus on man made climate change, also donated £10,000 personally to Badenoch’s Conservative leadership campaign, while allowing her use of his London home to help her campaign.
Record also funded the linked Tufton Street-based organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, whose funders and directors have collectively donated more than £7 million to the Conservative party.
Other politicians to have received funding from Record include former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns, whose failed attempt to hold onto her seat at last general election was funded by Record, before she defected to Reform UK, where she has campaigned against both Net Zero, and the construction of a solar panel farm in Lincolnshire.
Neither Net Zero Watch, nor the GWPF declare their funders and they have denied connections to the fossil fuel industry.
However, US tax records previously revealed that the GWPF had received funding from groups with oil and gas interests.
Several other members of Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet also have connections to funders of the GWPF.
Badenoch’s Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly and her Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel both previously received a £10,000 donation from the hedge fund executive Michael Hintze, who has funded GWPF. Following the donation, Patel called on former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to scrap the Government’s Net Zero plans, saying “the public are not ready” to make the changes necessary to reach the target.
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