The North Sea oil industry has been in transition for some years following the collapse of oil prices in late 2014. Large cost reductions have been painfully achieved. Production has increased due to a combination of new fields coming on stream plus a substantial increase in production efficiency to around 75%. But new field investment expenditure has fallen dramatically since 2015 and exploration remains at a relatively low level reflecting principally the maturity of the province as well as oil and gas prices far below their pre-2015 levels.
Oil and gas giant Shell has announced the agreement of a new $10 billion revolving credit facility to help progress the firm towards its net carbon footprint.
The following figure is from the Government produced ‘UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions national statistics 1990 – 2017’. The bar chart shows the main sectors contributing to GHG emissions.
Creating the "world's first net zero carbon industrial cluster" could help protect thousands of jobs and make a major impact to cutting emissions, its backers said.
By Mike Tholen, upstream policy director at Oil and Gas UK
If necessity is the mother of invention, the Committee on Climate Change’s “Net Zero – The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming” report should spur a jump-start for the carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) industry in the UK.
The Oil & Gas Technology Centre is planning to set up a Net Zero Solution Centre with a view to making the UK Continental Shelf the first net zero oil & gas basin globally.
European Union leaders plan to underscore the importance of the fight against climate change when they meet next week, though their words will stop short of a mandate to move toward zeroing out fossil fuel emissions.
