Five and a half years ago, production started from phase two of BP’s Clair field West of Shetland and thoughts at the company started turning towards phase three, Clair South.
It had been hoped that there would be a decision on how and when to go ahead by 2020, then it was pushed back two years and we’re still waiting.
Its perfectly normal; indeed endemic delay is part and parcel of everyday decision-making life on the UK Continental Shelf. Everyone just lives with it; more or less.
Throwing toys out of the proverbial pram just doesn’t work. It’s a case of keep calm and take a stroll to the nearest fancy coffee machine.
In the case of Clair South, more than anything else, BP’s decision to delay was about creating space to think, for everyone involved including crucial contractors to make the forthcoming development as economically and environmentally competitive as possible.
However, after knocking on 50 years of oil production; significantly longer in the case of gas, time is seriously running out on the UK Continental Shelf.
Indeed this is the case everywhere on the North West Europe Continental Shelf of which our mature patch is a major part and the second largest producer of oil and gas.
But the issue isn’t old age, though it cannot be discounted entirely. Rather is mounting pressure from Global Climate Change to drastically curb the petroleum industry and shut it down completely.
This could conceivably impact prize projects like the Clair development, or Rosebank, in the West of Shetland.
Equally, it could lead to cross industry initiatives like Crown Estate Scotland’s INTOG (Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas) leasing round and its 13 approved projects announced a few days ago being rendered pointless.
INTOG is designed to attract investment in innovative offshore wind projects in Scottish waters, as well as help decarbonise North Sea operations.
Electrification of the UKCS should have happened 20 years ago, but it didn’t. Unlike Norway.
Now we have INTOG and it could be great; but the industry is running out of time.
We’re all used to dire warnings about the consequences of doing little or nothing and pressure on government to act mounting. At least 25 years of this sort of thing in COP conference terms alone and it is easy to become blasé about such warnings.
I have until now been an advocate of the pragmatic approach – keep the UKCS healthy as it sinks into late middle age, including developing oil and gas finds sitting in the bank but cancelling all but the most essential of drilling while ramping up low carbon energy. basically offshore wind in something resembling an efficient manner.
That is where the industry more or less is today. As Big Oil winds down, Big Wind is cranking up. It appears to be working out, sort of.
But, on February 28 the UN’s IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) issued its most serious warning yet about what the future holds if mankind fails to take drastic action to curb and reverse the impacts of climate change.
One would have to be a fool not to have detected a change of tone in how the warning was delivered.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres bluntly called for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040.
“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” he said.
“Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Stepping up his pleas for action on fossil fuels, Guterres called for rich countries to accelerate their target for achieving net zero emissions to as early as 2040, and developing nations to aim for 2050 — about a decade earlier than most current targets.
If industry leaders at Offshore Energy UK (formerly Oil & Gas UK) actually comprehend what Guterres said, then they will realise that the entire UKCS strategic model will have to be rebuilt … possibly from the ground up.
And if that in the end means cancelling all but decom-related drilling ditching future potential projects and initiatives like INTOG, then so be it, deeply uncomfortable for the UK though that may be.
There can be no hiding away from the climate crisis of which Big Oil is among the most prominent architects.
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