Far from being a wholesale market \/"Far from being an abundant, national resource that we can turn on at will, there are some important limitations to what the North Sea can provide and when""Oil-heavy basin: The geology of the North Sea means that, after nearly 50 years of production, 70% of what’s left in the basin is oil not gas – and not the type of oil that we use in UK refineries, which means that we export 80% of it""Limited gas reserves: To put North Sea gas reserves in context, as Europe seeks to slash its dependence on Russian gas, even extracting all proven UK reserves and resources from new fields would only meet about 1% of European gas demand each year to 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee""Long development time: It takes on average 28 years to go from discovering a new field to getting any oil or gas out of the ground, according to official figures. So, even if the government were to licence a new gas field today, it would likely be 2050 – the year the UK has pledged to be net zero –before it produced anything we could use in our homes""Pipeline of oil, not gas: There are, of course, licensed fields further along the development pipeline, but most of this is oil, not gas. Analysis by Uplift of Rystad data shows that oil makes up 73% of the resource in the 46 new fields up for approval in the next three years"
Julian Pavey ● 1481d