[LONDON] British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak didn’t win himself many new pro-climate admirers with his government’s recent declaration that it plans to award new licenses every year for oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

Critics bemoaned this latest rollback on the national climate commitments, even though Sunak maintains that the UK will still achieve its net-zero target by 2050.

This plan, announced by King Charles at the opening of Parliament last week, comes just weeks after the government said it would delay the start of a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, as well as the phasing out of gas boilers.

To be fair, Sunak has said that he wants the UK to become less reliant on expensive imports of oil and gas. He has asked the energy department to resuscitate Britain’s declining offshore oil industry, and look at ways to boost the output of wind farms and other alternative energy sources.

The opposition Labour party has long said it is against the use of fossil fuels. Political and energy analysts believe that even if Labour wins the next general election and ousts Sunak from power, the new government will find it difficult to reverse policies on the exploration and production of oil and gas, especially as these projects generate more energy and billions of pounds in tax revenue.

“We must not be complacent at a time when we are seeing global risks rising. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the instability in the Middle East are warning signals that hostile players can play havoc with our energy supply,” said Claire Coutinho, the British Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

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“As energy markets become more unstable it’s just common sense to make the most of our own homegrown advantages and use the oil, gas, wind and hydrogen on our doorstep in the North Sea. Rather than importing dirtier fuels from abroad, we want to give industry the certainty to invest in jobs here and unlock billions of pounds for our own transition to clean energy.”

Coutinho added that the new policy would also provide certainty for some 200,000 workers in the North Sea’s oil and gas industry, as well as add about £16 billion (S$26.8 billion) to the UK economy each year. 

Critics, however, argue that having more oil and gas from the North Sea will neither bring electricity bills down nor improve energy security.

The southern part of the North Sea is rich in gas and has vast reserves near existing infrastructure, which can be brought into production quickly if needed.

The North Sea, Irish Sea, and the waters around Scotland contain recoverable reserves of 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), according to a 2021 report by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).

There are also 6.4 billion BOE in reserves that cannot be commercially extracted at this stage.

The NSTA said that oil and gas companies have the green light to plan, explore and develop oil and gas resources. The regulator said that some will be fast-tracked so that new oil and gas finds could be developed rapidly.

For example, the NSTA has approved the development of the Rosebank oil field project, which is located about 130 km off the coast of Shetland and is one of the largest undeveloped discoveries in UK waters.

The field, which holds up to 500 million barrels of oil, will be drilled by Norwegian state energy company Equinor and London-listed Ithaca Energy. Drilling could start in 2026 and the field, which could produce as much as 69,000 barrels of oil per day, is expected to be in production until 2050.

“We need more projects like Rosebank if the UK is serious about delivering a homegrown energy future,” said David Whitehouse, the chief executive of Offshore Energies UK, a trade association for the UK’s offshore energies industry. “We have around 283 fields in the North Sea, but over 180 of those will stop producing within the next decade.

The UK’s oil and gas production levels have been in decline since the turn of the century, falling by 70 per cent since 2000 to 1.34 million BOE per day.

According to Whitehouse, there is an urgent need to boost oil and gas production domestically to avoid having to import from abroad, which would lead to higher costs for consumers, the economy and the climate. It is estimated that the UK spent about £117 billion on imported energy in 2022.

Oil and gas accounted for three-quarters of the UK’s total energy use in 2021, according to government data.

The output of renewables – mainly wind, solar and biofuels – has risen nine-fold since 2000. Renewables accounted for 42 per cent of electricity generation in 2022, surpassing fossil fuels (41 per cent) for the first time, according to the National Grid. The share of nuclear energy was 15 per cent.

On his part, Sunak has to do more to convince the British public that the series of u-turns on various climate commitments is not part of any electoral strategy to create a divide with Labour.

Labour’s shadow energy security secretary Ed Milliband, who described the plans as a “desperate political strategy”, said: “We already have regular North Sea oil and gas licensing in Britain, and it is precisely our dependence on fossil fuels that has led to the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.”