UK Offers New North Sea Oil And Gas Licences Despite Climate Concern – The United Kingdom has launched a new licensing window to permit oil and gas companies to search for fossil fuels in the North Sea, despite climate activists’ threats of legal action. The North Sea Transition Authority has begun the process of granting more than one hundred oil and gas extraction licenses. Approximately 900 places are available for exploration.
The procedure, which will last until the end of June, is the first since the 2019-2020. Before that, the process was near annual, but the government put it on hold while it developed a “climate compatibility check.” However, the check has been criticized for being merely advising and not preventing authorities from issuing a license. The licensing round is also criticized for its inability to handle Britain’s short-term challenges with probable gas shortages and skyrocketing prices.
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Greenpeace climate activists stated that the decision to open the licensing round was “possibly unlawful and we will be carefully examining opportunities to take action”. Since becoming prime minister, Liz Truss has reopened the door to fracking in the United Kingdom and rejected Labour’s requests to extend the windfall tax on oil and gas corporations. This week, the chief executive of Shell stated that governments may need to tax energy corporations in order to pay for initiatives to shield “the poorest” from rising prices.
The government asserts that the additional licenses will increase Britain’s energy security and create jobs, while the climate minister, Graham Stuart, stated on Friday that the move would be “good for the environment.” Stuart told BBC Breakfast, “Actually it’s good for the environment because when we burn our own gas it’s got lower emissions around its production than foreign gas as well as supporting British jobs.”
Philip Evans, a Greenpeace UK energy transition campaigner, stated: “Yet again this government’s energy policy benefits fossil fuel companies and no one else. Supporting the oil and gas giants profiteering from the energy and climate crises ignores the speedy solutions that are best for the economy, for lowering bills and for the climate.”
Experts have made it very obvious that we require warmer, more energy-efficient homes and a significant push for inexpensive, domestic, renewable energy. The IMF reiterated that any delay in decarbonisation will significantly increase its cost. New oil and gas licenses will not reduce energy costs for struggling families this winter or any winter in the near future, nor will they improve energy security over the medium term.
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Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, stated that a shift away from oil and gas is necessary and accused the UK government of “haphazard planning” about energy. In an interview with BBC Breakfast on Friday morning, prior to the SNP party conference in Aberdeen, she stated, “In terms of new licences, I’ve been very clear that within the context of that just transition, we’ve got to subject any decisions about further exploitation of oil and gas to the most stringent climate checks.”
“I worry right now that what we’re hearing from the UK government is just a continuation of their haphazard planning about energy. In the long term, what they’re doing is undermining energy security, rather than strengthening it, because energy security – it’s difficult, it’s challenging – but the route to energy security is to secure that transition away from fossil fuels to renewable.”
