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Analysis

Angus Walker offers some analysis of the UK government ’ s oil and gas announcements

In many ways nothing new has happened . The North Sea Transition Authority awards oil and gas extraction licenses and will award the latest batch as normal later this year . One hundred and fifteen bids have been received and it is expected to award 100 of those .

The government justifies the compatibility of these awards with net zero on two fronts . First , it claims that gas extracted from UK waters ‘ is almost four times cleaner than imports ’; to quote the headline in the North Sea Transition Authority press release . There is nothing special about North Sea gas , it is just the method of transportation that reduces emissions as it does not get liquefied , transported and regasified as do supplies from further afield , and it is those processes that result in the high carbon intensity figure . Indeed , a gas pipeline direct from Norway that does not undergo that process to get to the UK has less than half the carbon intensity of North Sea gas .

The headline is actually highly misleading because the accompanying article has a little asterisk saying ‘( except pipeline imports from Norway )’ and 74 percent of imported gas comes through that pipeline ( according to the ONS ). If you include those imports , the average carbon intensity is 25.1 kgCO 2

/ boe ( barrel of oil equivalent ), only slightly larger than the UK figure of 21 .

The second justification is that the government is pressing ahead with carbon capture projects . If oil and gas are to remain part of the energy mix in 2050 , the date that net zero carbon emissions are to be achieved in the UK , then CO 2 will have to be captured at the point that the oil and gas are combusted and then stored . There is no direct link to new oil and gas extraction from the North Sea and

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