Company behind failed Surrey oilfield project sells site at massive loss — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) sold the Horse Hill oilfield site for £1m after investing more than £25m over a decade, with the licence area once valued at £46m in September 2018 before the company wrote down its interest to just £55,360.
- UKOG rebranded as UK Energy Group, raising £1m in 2025 for hydrogen-storage projects in Dorset and Yorkshire and a further £500,000 for a proposed East Yorkshire salt-cavern site.
- Energy B, the new owner, submitted a renewed planning application in May to Surrey county council for four production wells that would extract up to 678,693 tonnes of oil over 20 years, estimating 2.3m tonnes of lifetime greenhouse gas emissions.
- Sarah Finch, the campaigner behind the 2024 Supreme Court ruling, said the new environmental assessment has "serious shortcomings" for failing to place emissions within the cumulative context of other approved fossil fuel projects, calling the developer's "insignificant" claim "false."
- Carbon Tracker's Guy Prince called Horse Hill an example of "regulatory stranding," warning that transition risk "transformed the entire business" of a small company concentrated on one project.
- Surrey county council closed its formal consultation on 13 July and could reach a decision this month, with the Weald Action Group threatening a further judicial review if the application is approved.
Why it matters: UKOG's £1m sale versus its £25m+ investment crystallises the financial cost of the Finch Ruling: small fossil fuel explorers can see entire balance sheets wiped out when courts require downstream emissions accounting. Surrey's decision will test whether local councils now routinely block new drilling on climate grounds or rubber-stamp projects whose lifetime emissions equal a meaningful slice of the UK's carbon budget.
Ask SkimNews
