This week came the news that permission for the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields was unlawful, owing to a failure to take into account the effect of downstream emissions, i.e. the combustion of the extracted products.
It may seem curious that this matters; everyone knew at the outset what the purpose of the permission was, and that a large chunk of what came up from the deeps would ultimately go up in smoke. But some people saw the chance to put a stop to these new fields after the case of Horse Hill went to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that downstream emissions must be taken account of when deciding permission.
In my view, this position is nonsensical. At the moment, our civilisation depends on the products that Rosebank and Jackdaw would have provided. It provides the grinning idiots who successfully brought the new case with the means to do so. Without oil, civilisation collapses, and successes at the Supreme Court count for naught. Rather than engaging in learned debate, by that point, we’re fighting over the last bag of Bonios – and they ain’t for our pooches. Thus it seems particularly self-defeating to attempt to block new oil fields. As a wealthy country, we are partly insulated against such stupidity thanks to our ability to buy oil from other countries. For anyone to think that blocking Rosebank and Jackdaw is good for our country is Baldrick-level stupidity. It is like the child who thinks he becomes invisible when he closes his eyes. We will import the needed oil from further away, and who knows, maybe part of it will come from dictatorships, and perhaps the environmental protections where it is ultimately drawn from will be weaker. Then, it has to be transported here. You cannot ban this substance until you no longer need it.
Rather than argue the toss about whether downstream emissions ought to have been considered by the planning authority, the court could simply have asked what effect those downstream emissions might have – to see whether they were even worth considering. Both sides could have produced a stubby pencil and calculated the influence of these new fields on the Earth’s climate. Then, if there was a gap between them, they could have argued the toss about that, until their estimates drew closer.
But they didn’t.
So, in the spirit of trying to find out the facts, I offer this calculation to estimate the effect on climate of the Rosebank field. It cost me only time, a cup of coffee, and a few electrons. I wonder how much the green lawfare has cost so far?
Gathering numbers
In Into the Unknown, I laid out some basic facts about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The interested reader can find there: the mass of the atmosphere; the mass of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the mass of carbon dioxide representing 1 ppm in concentration; and the basic equation to calculate the temperature change caused by a change in CO2 concentration, given what I considered to be generous (to the cause of alarm) parameters. There, I noted that Wiki states that 57% of emissions of CO2 are absorbed by the biosphere; I called it 50%, again to favour the cause of alarm.
What about Rosebank and oil? According to the BBC, Rosebank holds 300-500 million barrels of oil. Let’s say 500 mil are extracted, to favour the cause of alarm. The internet says that a barrel of oil has a mass of 136 kg. Radovic gives the mass proportion of oil that is carbon as ~85%.
With these numbers, we are ready to make our calculation.
The Calculation
| Parameter | Value | Temp change from baseline (280 ppm) | |
| Present atmospheric concentration CO2 ppm (2024) | 424 | 1.19727 | K |
| Mass of CO2 in atmosphere kg | 3.136E+015 | ||
| Mass of CO2 for 1 ppm kg | 7.83E+012 | ||
| Mass of 1 barrel of oil kg | 136 | [internet] | |
| Barrels of oil in Rosebank | 500,000,000 | [BBC] | |
| Mass of oil in Rosebank kg | 68,000,000,000 | ||
| Mass of C in Rosebank kg | 57,800,000,000 | the C:H ratio from Radovic PSU | |
| When combusted, half of this is absorbed, leaving | 28,900,000,000 | ||
| Convert to CO2 kg | 106,000,000,000 | [*44/12] | |
| PPM rise | 0.0135 | ||
| PPM new | 424.0135 | 1.19736 | K |
| Temperature change caused by Rosebank | 0.000092 | K |
Combustion of all of the higher estimate of Rosebank’s oil would lead to an atmospheric temperature rise of ~ 1/10,000 of a kelvin. The calculation is made with parameters favouring the cause of alarm. It does not account for the fact that not all oil is burnt. Some is sent to the petrochemical industry, or used as lubricants, or ends up being spread on roads, etc. However, since 0.000092 K is not a significant temperature increase, indeed it will not be measurable, there is no case to prevent Rosebank from being permitted.
The folks that oppose this prefer other metrics to temperature change when they are critical of projects. Millions of tonnes of CO2 sounds far more frightening that a ten-thousandth of a degree. On another thread, Jaime gives the number of 10.5 million tonnes of CO2 as the downstream emissions of Horse Hill, which was enough to stifle that project. What temperature rise might that be? Well, I’ll tell you. Using similar reasoning to that given above, it’s 1/200,000 of a degree kelvin – again, given alarm-favouring parameters.
And this is why the metric of tonnes of CO2 is the preferred one: translated into temperature change, the numbers are trivial. They are theoretical – far too small to be detected.
It’s time these jokers stopped posing triumphantly on the steps of the Courts, chests puffed out like Washington crossing the Delaware. They need to recognise that their lives, and the lives of those they love, rely on the very thing they just gave a kicking.
Climate Scepticism 
” It is like the child who thinks he becomes invisible when he closes his eyes.” That is probably the best analogy I have ever come across in this subject. I shall nick that if I may!?
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Well done Jit. I was hoping you’d do this. Miliband is today pontificating about how the Conservatives gambled in the “fossil fuel casino” and how this government is putting a stop to that . . . . . presumably by gambling our prosperity, our economy, our energy security, and indeed our very lives – to prevent one10,000th of a degree of global warming. Sounds like a good deal to me . . . . . if you’re as mad as Mad Ed Baldrick!
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Starmer may be worse for Britain than Biden was for America. At least Biden had the excuse of senility. What excuse does Starmer have?
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On the “start the week” thread, I mentioned the idea of “energy symbiosis” – a concept developed by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: “energy symbiosis, i.e. the mutually supportive relationships that exist between energies and materials. For example, in the first half of the 20th century, England consumed more wood simply to support the galleries in its mines than it had burned in the 18th century. In the 20th century, oil consumption stimulated demand for coal – to make cars, steel, roads, cement – and also greatly stimulated and facilitated the use of wood for energy production. Today, car headlights consume more petroleum than the world economy did in 1900, when most lighting was based on kerosene lamps.”
He expands on this, in a way relevant to this discussion, in the LRB this week: “electricity production accounts for only 40 per cent of global emissions. Decarbonising electricity production is only the first and easiest stage in the ‘transition’. Even leaving aside aviation and maritime transport, the production of key materials such as steel, cement, plastics, fertilisers and food remains very difficult to decarbonise. Nobody in China or anywhere else has the secret. Hence the enormous amount of ‘negative emissions’ (using non-existing or non-scalable technologies) in all the net-zero scenarios of the IPCC or the IEA. Despite all its electric cars, the carbon intensity (the ratio between CO2 emissions and GDP) of China’s economy remains extremely high – higher than Saudi Arabia’s and more than twice that of the UK. Even in the countries that are the ‘real leaders’ in decarbonisation, the energy mix remains dominated by fossil fuels: 75 per cent in the UK, 50 per cent in Denmark, France and Norway. IEA forecasters do not foresee a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, but rather a peak in emissions before 2030, followed by a plateau at a high level until 2050.”
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I’m wondering if there’s any legal mileage in making a distinction between an avoidable waste product on the one hand and something which is part and parcel of a process on the other. CO2 from hydrocarbons falls into the latter category – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature ineluctably embedded in the conversion of energy tied up in molecular bonds into energy in a utilisable form like rotational energy. One might even argue, given CO2’s status as the molecule with lowest Gibb’s Free Energy of any, that if a process does NOT conclude with a puff of CO2 then you’re doing something wrong – there’s more goodness to squeeze out of the raw material. The natural world has been doing this for (American) billions of years.
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slowlyclever: rather surprisingly, and despite his administration’s push for a transition to a ‘carbon free’ future, Biden’s impact on energy production was in fact quite positive. See THIS.
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The climate cult is a chilling national scale example of the ironic proverb about the need to destroy the village in order to save it.
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Robin, as time passes, it is becoming clear that nearly everything claimed by the prior senile Administration should be taken with a serious grain of salt. If oil production did in fact increase under Biden it was not a goal of their policy, but a bug.
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a) Jit, as a rough check I have compared your figures to those calculated by Willis Eschenbach recently.https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/14/keith-starmers-climate-madness/
You calculate, in Kelvin, about 1/10,000 for Rosebank whereas he estimates about 7/10,000 for the whole UK economy. So you are both of the same magnitude, but your value is smaller as it is for only part of the economy.
b) Max, you wrote, “One might even argue, given CO2’s status as the molecule with lowest Gibb’s Free Energy of any, that if a process does NOT conclude with a puff of CO2 then you’re doing something wrong …” That is fascinating fact and I need to think about it further to understand its significance.
Regards, John C.
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Jit,
There are those who might argue that your calculations are simplistic, which indeed they are. But this would miss the point. In science and engineering simplistic — but easy to perform — calculations are often what is required to establish whether something should be looked into further. Once one has determined that we are orders of magnitude away from being in the zone of concern, then we can stop worrying.
However, your calculations still have one fatal flaw. You have failed to take into account that the UK is the world’s thought leader and that China, India, Russia, the USA and Uncle Tom Cobley are all waiting to see if approval is given before they make their next move. So you should have included the whole world’s CO2 emissions in your calculation of downstream emissions.
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JIT,
I did a similar calculation for a blog post about a decade ago:
I was a bit suspicious of going from 424 ppm to 3.136E+015 kg of CO2 in the atmosphere, but it seems to square with Google and my own calculations. The ppm numbers bandied about refer to volume or number of molecules instead of mass. It’s simply the matter of using a conversion factor of about 1.5. I actually outsourced that part of my calculation to someone who did it back in 2007 (the better part of a decade earlier) when CO2 was 283 ppmv. Since I was only converting 100 ppmv worth of CO2 to a volume of dry ice, it shouldn’t’ve affected my result.
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Thank you Mike. If anyone isn’t following what he means about a conversion factor of 1.5, think of it like this. The average mass of a molecule in the atmosphere is ~29. The mass of CO2 is 44 and the ratio is ~1.5. Then say if CO2 is 400 ppm = 0.04 %, it is 1.5 * 0.04 = 0.06 % by mass.
So the easy way to estimate the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is to find out what the total mass is, and multiply by the concentration of CO2, and multiply that by 1.5.
I hadn’t noticed before how close the number was to 1.5.
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I hope that this sort of analysis may prove useful in due course. The problem with challenges to date against fossil fuel extraction plans such as Rosebank, Horse Hill etc, is that the Courts have now decided that Environmental Impact Assessments submitted by developers as part of their planning applications, must include details of “downstream” emissions, i.e., as Jit says, the emissions that will result from burning the oil or gas extracted over the years, should planning permission be granted to allow the development to proceed.
Court challenges have, to date, succeeded because such EIAs had not been in place, and therefore the Courts found that the planning permissions granted were invalid on procedural grounds. If I have construed the Court decisions correctly, the planning permissions have not been invalidated because the Courts concluded (they did not) that downstream emissions were too problematic, causing the UK to breach international treaty obligations, the Climate Change Act or any other legal duty.
The next, interesting, stage, then, will be when a developer submits an EIA with a calculation along the lines of that undertaken by Jit, and says something along the lines of “there it is; it’s globally insignificant and will make no measurable difference to the climate. And so, grant me my planning permission.”
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That’s not going to happen though Mark, because even if the downstream emissions can be deemed as globally insignificant, they will still probably be significant enough to conclude that they are ‘incompatible with the UK’s legally binding Net Zero target’ – which, as we all know, is globally insignificant in itself and a waste of time, but thanks to our politicians, is now legally binding. Either that, or it will be incompatible with our (non legally binding) commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement. That’s why Net Zero must be repealed, we must withdraw from the Paris Accord and we must repeal EU environmental directives incorporated into UK law which compel us to consider downstream emissions in an EIA. Those things are not going to happen under this government.
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Jaime, I don’t disagree at all, about either this government or the need to repeal the legislation you have highlighted. However, my point is simply that it’s not over until the fat lady sings and that there is still scope for developers to run legal arguments that have the potential to be effective.
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As for Jaime’s point about this Labour government, there’s this:
“‘We’d go absolutely nuts’: PM warned of Labour fight if he backs huge oilfield
Exclusive: MPs and ministers say they would oppose Starmer if he tries to approve Rosebank development”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/31/keir-starmer-warned-against-approving-rosebank-oilfield-labour-unease-heathrow
Senior Labour figures are warning of a serious fight if Keir Starmer tries to give the go-ahead to a giant new oilfield off Shetland later this year.
MPs and ministers have told the Guardian they are prepared to oppose the UK prime minister should he try and give final consent to the Rosebank development, which is Britain’s biggest untapped oilfield.
Many in the party see the battle over Rosebank as the next front in the struggle between its environmental wing and those around Rachel Reeves who want to push for economic growth above all else. The chancellor signalled her support for a third runway at Heathrow this week as part of the government’s latest push to stimulate the economy.
One ally of the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, who is leading the government’s climate agenda, said the former Labour leader would have a “punchy” response for any attempt to give consent to Rosebank. The ally said: “Ed will come to that fight armed with a lot of evidence about what Rosebank will do to our carbon emissions.”…
I trust Jit will send him the calculation to help him!
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Mark, if I knew how to send him a link to this page, I’d be inclined to. It would be interesting to see his response, if one ever came (I doubt it). I’m sure when his assessment arrives it will be measured in millions of tonnes of CO2, the more to scare us.
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Max, you wrote at 2:53pm on 1st February, “One might even argue, given CO2’s status as the molecule with lowest Gibb’s Free Energy of any, that if a process does NOT conclude with a puff of CO2 then you’re doing something wrong – there’s more goodness to squeeze out of the raw material.”
As an electrical engineer I find thermodynamics challenging but very interesting so I went away to try and understand your statement more fully, especially its significance for energy and climate policy. Here is what I think I understand. Please correct me if I am wrong …
CO2 is the gas molecule with the lowest Gibbs free energy (GFE) that I could find [Ref. 1]; there are liquids and solids with lower GFE.
It is the Gibbs free energy (rather than the Helmholtz free energy) that is important because GFE relates to chemical reactions which start and finish at constant temperature and pressure which is precisely what happens in the Earth’s atmosphere i.e. everything starts and finishes near 1 bar pressure and the local ambient temperature (15 deg. C, give or take quite a bit).
The use of the term ‘free energy’ in the GFE relates to, “… that part of the internal energy … which can be converted into work …” [Ref. 2]. So, perhaps, a better term than ‘free energy’ in non-technical speech would be ‘available energy’, and a better term than ‘internal energy’ would be ‘hotness’. So, in the climate context, the Gibbs free energy is, roughly, the available energy in something that gives off heat (gets hot) in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Ref. 1 also tells us why this is so significant, “Standard Gibbs energies of formation of compounds have their own significance … They are a measure of the ‘thermodynamic altitude’ of a compound above or below a ‘sea level’ of stability … Compounds that lie below sea level [such as CO2] are stable with respect to decomposition into the[ir] elements.” Or as you put it so much more eloquently, Max, “… if a process does NOT conclude with a puff of CO2 then you’re doing something wrong – there’s more goodness to squeeze out of the raw material.” Thank you for the insight!
References
Regards, John C.
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Max & John Cullen – love learning about how the natural world works, so thanks Max for starting John to further investigate & comment.
Still not sure what you both mean thou (I’m a bit thick).
Max, when you say “The natural world has been doing this for (American) billions of years”, do you mean the tar sands/oil seeps – History of the petroleum industry in the United States – Wikipedia
If this has been happening for billions of years around the world, why did we have ice ages?
Out of my depth on this, so just ignore if asking stupid questions.
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Df. why did we have ice ages?
Don’t really know, but presumably they imply a significant decreases in the energy flow to the Earth from the Sun. Two main possibilities 1) internal variability of the Sun’s internal mechanisms or 2) the solar system passes through clouds of inter-stellar gas (or perhaps 2 causes 1).
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Welcome back, Alan.
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Alan K: my limited understanding of the cause of ice ages is that they are driven by Milankovich cycles – variations in the earth’s orbit, axial tilt, etc – which influence how much heat from the sun is received and absorbed.
I’m on thin ice here so very happy for someone to give a more competent explanation!
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LOL, ‘thin ice’ Mike H. Au contraire! The Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last glacial maximum was up to 2 miles thick! You could certainly skate on it.
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Very good JJ – I set myself up for that!
Your comment does raise another aspect of the behaviour of nature in response to the climate: the extraordinary robustness and resilience. This never gets any airtime but, in my view, the speed with which nature recovered from the last ice age and re-populated huge areas which had been under ice for millenia is remarkable. It should give us confidence that the very mild changes over the past few centuries are relatively trivial and certainly not a harbinger of catastrophe.
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Mike, I believe we are speaking about two different types of Ice Age. Through much of geological time the poles have been ice free with only relatively short episodes that are marked by permanent glaciers – such as the late Carboniferous (= Pennsylvanian) – Permian and the Pleistocene and Holocene. These episodes might be explained by interstellar dust (although that would imply that we are within one today). This was the type of ice age I was writing about.
Then within an ice age there are episodes of ice advance and ice retreat. It is this second type of ice age that might be explained by Milankovitch cycles and their like.
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Alan; thanks for that. I was unaware of the more distant past and the broader climate picture.
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Alan & MikeH – thanks for your Ice Age thoughts/info.
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Labour’s potential civil war simmers away:
“PM faces growing internal backlash over potential approval of Rosebank oilfield
Labour MPs describe ‘breaking point’ in relations, calling for Keir Starmer to stand by party’s manifesto commitments”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/03/pm-faces-growing-internal-backlash-over-potential-approval-of-rosebank-oilfield
Keir Starmer is facing a growing internal backlash over the potential approval of a giant new oilfield, after Treasury sources indicated Rachel Reeves was likely to give it her backing.
MPs described a “breaking point” in relations and called for Starmer to reiterate his own commitments to no further oil and gas licences. The proposed Rosebank development was given the go-ahead in 2023 but was ruled unlawful by a court last week.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has previously described the licence issued to Rosebank as “climate vandalism” – setting up a potential major clash between his department and the Treasury.
Reeves is understood to be supportive of a new application for environmental consent, with allies suggesting that would not violate Labour’s manifesto, which promised not to issue new exploration licences, but not to cancel ones that have already been issued.
Miliband’s department is due to publish new guidelines in late spring which could scupper any attempt by the oil companies to successfully resubmit their applications.
Climate-concerned MPs are likely to make their appeals directly to Keir Starmer about the importance of being seen to stand by the party’s manifesto commitment of no new oil and gas licences.
Anger is widespread even among centrist Labour MPs who have been major champions of infrastructure.…
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Thank you Mark. A typically-balanced piece.
And climate vandalism! 1/10,000th of a degree.
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From Energy Voice;
“Reduced North Sea investment as a result of UK government policy could lead to millions of tonnes of additional CO2 emissions from imports, according to a report.”
“The Gneiss Energy report estimated the emissions impact of reduced UK production on whilst in tandem increasing imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the 2030s. It modelled scenarios ranging from total reliance on UK domestic production to a ‘sunset’ scenario which assumes a 50% reduction in gas supplies from the UK continental shelf (UKCS).
In the sunset scenario, UK gas demand is met with increased supply balanced between Norway and LNG imports from countries like the United States, Qatar and Algeria. Gneiss estimates this would lead to 13% higher pre-consumption CO2 emissions compared to the current UK energy mix.
By contrast, if the UK were to achieve 100% domestic gas supply it would lead to a 36% reduction in associated emissions. While Gneiss notes that sourcing 100% of UK demand from domestic production is an “unlikely proposition”, it demonstrates a “strong emissions-focused argument for increased UK production”.
“This is especially true for the handful of large, undeveloped UK gas fields with attractive emissions profiles and significant capital investment requirements,” the report states.”
I’ve been a broken record on this. Since the downstream emissions will be the same, irrespective of where the oil and gas come from, local production actually has lower emissions than imports.
Hopefully the companies appealing the Rosebank and Jackdaw decisions will pick up on this and use it to turn the protestors’ arguments on their head. It should also feed into policy towards the North Sea: we should be encouraging efforts to extract every last drop of oil and puff of gas.
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Forgot to add the link:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZTChSrtGXfPdWGSZnbXNrmrhS
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If the oceans warm there’s going to be more CO2 in the atmosphere as a result (not cause), regardless of the reasons for that warming. In any case, long-term cloud cover is the climate metric that too often gets ignored.
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“Keir Starmer sets up North Sea oil clash with Ed Miliband
Prime Minister risks deepening a Cabinet split as he prepares to wave through Equinor’s Rosebank project”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/05/starmer-back-north-sea-oil-rosebank-criticised-miliband/
The article is behind a paywall, so I haven’t read it, though I have seen what I think is an extract from it, as follows (though I can’t vouch for it):
Sir Keir Starmer is expected to back one of Britain’s biggest offshore oil field developments despite fierce opposition from his Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband.
The Prime Minister and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, are expected to wave through the Rosebank oil project in the North Sea despite the risk of exacerbating a Cabinet split with Mr Miliband who has previously referred to it as “a colossal waste of taxpayer money and climate vandalism”.
Sir Keir is understood to have given assurances to executives at Equinor, Rosebank’s lead developer, that he will support the project, which is expected to generate nearly £7bn of investment and hundreds of millions of pounds in taxes for the UK.
Only last week, Ms Reeves backed the Prime Minister, telling Channel 4 News: “We were really clear in our manifesto that we would honour all existing licences including at Rosebank and Jackdaw [a separate oil field operated by Shell] and we will stick by those commitments.”
However, the Prime Minister and Chancellor’s support of Rosebank is likely to add to a growing rift in the Labour Party over net zero.…
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“Keir Starmer urged to resist pressure to permit Rosebank North Sea oilfield
Leading climate group warns of damage to green agenda if giant project goes ahead”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/09/keir-starmer-urged-to-resist-pressure-to-permit-rosebank-north-sea-oilfield
Keir Starmer will do huge damage to the global fight against climate change if he gives in to political pressure and allows the development of a giant new oilfield in the North Sea, according to an analysis by the country’s leading environmental institute.
Chaired by Nicholas Stern, the Grantham Institute on Climate Change will fire a warning shot to ministers not to give the green light to the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, after suggestions that the Treasury is now in favour of allowing drilling to maximise economic growth.
Lord Stern authored the pioneering 2006 review on climate change that helped to create national and international momentum for a global deal on combating climate change and is regarded as one of the leading experts in the field.
He is also former permanent secretary to the Treasury.
The issue of more drilling for oil in the North Sea has shot to the top of the political agenda with the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, herself under pressure from the populist anti-green Reform UK, pressing Starmer last week to give the go-ahead for the Rosebank field.
A paper by the institute to be published on Monday will argue that if the government does agree “it will signal to all other fossil fuel producers, including the United States and Russia, that it supports a ‘business as usual’ approach the oil and gas industry”….
What extraordinary hubris? Is he really so deluded that he think Putin and Trump’s (and Xi’s and Mohdi’s) energy policies are influenced by what the UK does?
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“Thirteen more oil and gas licences could be cancelled after Rosebank court ruling
Exclusive: Future of further projects uncertain after Rosebank and Jackdaw licences were found to have been unlawfully granted”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/13/thirteen-more-oil-and-gas-licences-could-be-cancelled-after-rosebank-court-ruling
Thirteen more oil and gas licences could be cancelled as ministers decide new guidance for fossil fuel extraction after a landmark court case, the Guardian has learned.
The admission that many more licences may ultimately be unlawful comes on the back of cabinet tensions over the future of two major oil and gas fields – Rosebank and Jackdaw – whose licences were last month found to have been unlawfully granted.
A judge ruled their applications did not take into account the emissions that arise from burning the oil and gas extracted from the projects.
Sources close to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, suggested she was keen to find ways through new guidance to allow the licences to proceed.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, who has previously described drilling at Rosebank as “climate vandalism”, is in the midst of a consultation about how new oil and gas projects should account for these emissions. The result of that consultation will ultimately decide whether such projects are allowed to take place.
It can now be revealed there are more oil and gas projects whose futures hang in the balance. In an exchange with the Green MP Carla Denyer, the energy minister Michael Shanks was forced to admit that 13 oil and gas fields currently at consent phase are subject to the recent court ruling.
A number of Labour MPs told the Guardian earlier this month that they believed there would be significant resistance in the party if the guidance ultimately led to the drilling being allowed to go ahead at Rosebank.
But Shanks told parliament this week that the impact of the court ruling was likely to extend beyond Rosebank and Jackdaw. He said “existing licences will be honoured, and we will not remove licences from fields that already have a licence.
“However, consents – the point at which extraction takes place – must take into account climate tests, and not least the compatibility test laid down by the supreme court. Any applications now or in future must take account of that.”
A source at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said licences that were at “consent level” would be subject to this consultation which is being helmed by Miliband.
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Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – wish I worked in that department. Yes/no & I’m out.
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Slightly O/T, but only slightly, and here seems to be as good a place as any:
“Giant gas field discovery could power Britain for a decade
Exploiting the find could add up to £112bn to GDP and create tens of thousands of jobs”]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/13/giant-gas-field-discovery-could-power-britain-for-decade/
A giant gas field has been discovered under Lincolnshire that could fuel the UK’s entire needs for a decade, reducing dependence on imports and generating tens of thousands of jobs, an energy company has claimed.
Egdon Resources, the business behind the discovery, is to formally announce its findings at an energy industry conference later this month.
Its preliminary work suggests that the field, centred on the market town of Gainsborough, is so large that it could benefit the whole UK economy, boosting growth through more jobs, increased tax revenue and cheaper energy.
If subsequent drilling confirms the scale of the find, it is likely to reignite the debate about fracking – and create a potential clash between Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, as the Government attempts to chart a course between net zero and economic growth…
...Deloitte estimated that exploiting the Gainsborough Trough field could add up to $140bn (£112bn) to GDP, yield $34bn in direct taxation and create tens of thousands of jobs. It said that CO2 emissions would be 218m tonnes lower than if Britain uses imported gas instead.
The Gainsborough Trough is a geological feature that has long been suspected of holding major fossil fuel resources....
...The area already supports two dozen small onshore oil wells but Egdon drilled into different strata, ancient mudstones lying about 2km deep, to find the gas.
It calculates that the field holds at least 480bn cubic metres of recoverable gas – about seven times the UK’s current annual consumption. Because gas usage is expected to decline in future, the reserve would be likely to last a decade.
It means the Gainsborough field is potentially much larger than Shell’s controversial North Sea Jackdaw development which is estimated to hold 38bn cubic metres….“Our results compare favourably with US commercial shale operations and are potentially world class,” said Mr Abbott.
“We could access all that energy from drilling pads on the ground above, each roughly the size of one or two football fields. The land take would be far smaller than for solar farms and the energy produced would be far greater.”...
…Politicians have, however, made clear that paying high prices is preferable to allowing fracking.…
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Mark – thanks for the comment & link. Just to add to your last comment quote, The Telegraph article ends –
“A spokesman for the Energy Department said: “We intend to ban fracking for good and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations. The biggest risk to our energy security is staying dependent on fossil fuel markets and only by sprinting to clean power by 2030 can the UK take back control of its energy and protect both family and national finances from price spikes.”
ps – see it only has 3734 comments so far, liked this one –
“Anthony Lester 1 day ago – It is a no brainer…which means the Government will say no, despite the research showing it will emit less CO2 than importing gas.”
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dfhunter, the balderdash coming out of the mouths of official spokesmen is seriously worrying. They all seem to be programmed like robots. Do they actually believe this rubbish? Or is it like England in the 16th century, when people changed religions whenever there was a new monarch on the throne? If we return a Reform UK government in 2029 will the official spokesmen all then say that net zero has to be overturned because it hugely inflated our bills, reduced the UK’s competitiveness, led to blackouts and destroyed our energy security?
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What does ‘ban fracking for good’ even mean? What do they intend to do? Stop all future governments from legislating to reverse the ban? How exactly? Are they going to pour concrete down every single fracking well in existence? Make it a criminal activity even to prospect for gas and oil beneath our feet? They are stark raving mad but for the avoidance of any doubt, they are also bad. These people are going to have to be forcibly removed from power.
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Profound ignorance on full display from govt spokesman…..many, if not most, wells are fracked. It’s a standard technique. The key feature when going after shale gas or oil is the extensive horizontal drilling which is then fractured.
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MikeH & others – the article also has this quote – “The area already supports two dozen small onshore oil wells but Egdon drilled into different strata, ancient mudstones lying about 2km deep, to find the gas.”
Not sure if true, but if so, it just beggars belief what that spokesman for the Energy Department said.
Seems we are saddled with idiots riding donkeys.
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Jaime at 9.21pm yesterday – I was with you in your comment until I reached the last sentence. Much though I despise the current government, we are stuck with them. They lack popular legitimacy, but they have a constitutional mandate. They’ll be voted out in 2029, but unfortunately by then they will have caused immense damage and possibly will have wrecked the country beyond repair. However flawed our democracy may be, however, we must respect it, for the alternative is even worse.
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Energy Voice has a good article on the current situation in the N. Sea – suspended animation sums it up:
https://www.energyvoice.com/insights/energy-opinion/567387/what-does-the-future-hold-for-uks-rosebank-and-jackdaw/
In case that’s not accessible, these paras provide an overview:
“In the meantime, these and around 13 other prospects will be considering next steps.
At stake is billions of investment that development and production consent from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) would trigger in order to deliver offshore development and construction work, such as putting platforms and pipelines in place.
Equinor and its partner Ithaca estimate construction phase of Rosebank alone will secure 2,000 jobs.
If some factions of the Labour-led UK government are at all counting on this investment, time appears to be running out.
For some, the court case finding might be the straw that breaks the investment camel’s back, added onto, at best, mixed messaging from Labour.”
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“Ban on new drilling confirmed as ministers consult on North Sea’s ‘clean energy future’
Gas and oil industry cautiously welcomes government proposals that could ease tax burden on sector”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/05/ban-on-new-drilling-confirmed-as-ministers-consult-on-north-sea-clean-energy-future
The UK government has unveiled proposals that could ease the tax burden on the offshore oil and gas sector but confirmed that it would also ban new drilling licences as part of a pledge to “unleash the North Sea’s clean energy future”.
The “windfall” tax on North Sea drillers, introduced in 2022 to help support households facing rising energy bills after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would be scrapped from 2030, the Treasury confirmed on Wednesday.
In its place, ministers will consult on a new regime, under which duties move in tandem with global wholesale energy prices, something the industry said would provide its investors with “certainty”.
Alongside the tax plans, the government announced an eight-week consultation on how to manage the North Sea’s transition from oil and gas to cleaner forms of energy, without triggering mass job losses.
The proposals, part of plans for the UK to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, follow through on Labour’s manifesto commitment not to permit any new drilling licences. This would make the UK the first major G7 oil producer to take such a step. However, the Guardian understands that oil companies could be allowed to increase the size of their fields with “bolt-ons” to existing licences....
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