The UK has opened a new licensing round for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, with around 100 licences up for grabs spanning 898 sections of the area.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the UK business secretary, has said that the move will help bolster energy security and generate jobs.
Rees-Mogg said: “(Russian president, Vladimir) Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine means it is now more important than ever that we make the most of sovereign energy resources.”
However, there are differences of opinion over what the move will mean for the UK’s long-term net-zero ambitions.
Climate experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] and the International Energy Agency [IEA] have suggested that expanding fossil fuel projects threatens the goal of keeping global temperature increases below 1.5C as per the Paris Agreement.
But those who back the move say that the UK’s new North Sea production will replace imported fuels, meaning that the carbon footprint in producing and transporting the resource will be reduced.
Indeed, oil and gas industry body Offshore Energies UK estimates that around 15 billion barrels of oil could be left in the North Sea that have not been tapped into, and with new oil fields being more environmentally friendly than older ones there was a climate “bonus” to capitalise on.
Yet, environmentalists and the oil industry have argued that these reserves will not be sufficient to bring down energy prices for consumers.
The North Sea Transition Authority has indicated that it takes an average time of five years to bridge the discovery of the oil with production, but the lead time is reducing. The Authority has also said that licenses in locations near existing exploration infrastructure will be fast-tracked to allow for quicker production.
The government has published a Climate Compatibility Checkpoint, upon which it has based its decision to rollout more licences.
The document has assessed carbon emissions generated by oil and gas production and how it compares to importing fuel. It does not measure the impact from carbon emissions when the fuels are eventually burnt.
