UNION leaders are warning of an ongoing North Sea jobs massacre with 12,000 oil and gas job lost in nine months and worse to come if there is not urgent and immediate action.

The offshore union reacted as the Committee on Climate Change discussed the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

It referred to a recent report from Policy Exchange, the right wing think tank co-founded by Michael Gove which estimates that of 40,000 jobs being created in the UK by the North Sea energy transition by 2050. This does not include the full potential of the onshore and offshore supply chain.

But the RMT complain that all the Committee on Climate Change can offer the transition for workers in the oil and gas sector is "ask the Treasury about re-training" and what it called "the ramblings of this Government’s favourite right wing think tank".

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: This is a profound insult to those key workers who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and to those still slogging their guts out in the North Sea, on ships and in our ports to keep the country running whilst politicians design an economy without them.

The Committee on Climate Change report also calls for a halving of the mega watt per hour price of offshore wind energy to £23 by 2050.

The RMT said that will also drive developers to the "cheapest contractors, locking tens of thousands of UK workers out of the green industrial revolution but protecting private dividends and profits".

It comes a month after a survey revealed that nearly half of North Sea oil workers have been either made redundant or been furloughed since lockdown, with four in five saying they are now open to leaving the industry.

But the report found that many are faced with "significant barriers" preventing them from transitioning from their current jobs onto green energy projects.

Environmental groups Friends of the Earth Scotland, Greenpeace and Platform who produced the findings have been urging the UK and Scottish Government to sit down with workers to shape policy together so that their experiences and ideas are used to steer Covid-19 recovery packages and the transition to renewables.

Mr Cash said: “The transport sector is the UK’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and we must ensure that Covid-19 does not push more people into their cars. The Climate Change Committee has already called for Government investment in public transport – and this is absolutely vital if we are to meet our carbon reduction targets.

"The carbon budget is clearly an opportunity to standardise measures that would build sustainable jobs, skills and domestic supply chains for the long term, particularly in the offshore wind industry, and it is disappointing that this has not been taken."

In October Dutch Shell said it expects to cut up to 9,000 jobs as it looks to slash spending amid the crude price plunge triggered by the coronavirus crisis.

The oil and gas giant, which is a big player in the North Sea, said the cuts form part of a simplification programme that it expects will help it save up to £1.9bn annually.

The group employs around 1,000 in its North Sea business and a further 5,500 in other operations in the UK.

It said a programme that is expected to involve from 7,000 to 9,000 job reductions should be completed by the end of 2022.

Shell cut North Sea jobs amid the four-year downturn that started in 2014.

The Just Transition Commission (JTC) established to make recommendations to ministers on how Scotland can transition to a net-zero economy by 2045 has suggested fast-tracked North Sea decommissioning projects should be used as a “skills bridge” to get hundreds of oil workers over the current job-cuts crisis and into green energy role It has said that bringing forward deferred oil-well plugging and abandonment (P&A) work would immediately create jobs.

Its Green Recovery report urged the Scottish Government to "not lose sight of the pressing need to tackle climate change", suggesting a green recovery can help rebuild after Covid-19.