OEUK: 111 North Sea Projects, £50bn Investment at Stake — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) published a report claiming that scrapping the Energy Profits Levy and approving the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields could unlock 111 projects and attract £50bn in investment.
- OEUK called for the windfall tax to be abolished by next January and replaced with an Oil and Gas Revenue Levy that would only trigger when prices spike.
- North Sea output is in decline, with projections that UK domestic supplies will meet only about a third of demand until 2050, according to the report.
- For the first time since North Sea production began, not a single exploration well was drilled in the UK last year, OEUK said.
- Uplift, the environmental group that brought prior legal challenges, branded the report a 'fantasy,' with director Tessa Khan arguing the PM should listen to summer wildfire victims rather than 'self-interested demands' of oil companies.
- The Rosebank and Jackdaw developments — which sit west of Shetland — were approved under the previous Conservative government but have been held up by successful Scottish court challenges on environmental grounds; OEUK says most of the 111 projects sit within existing licensed areas rather than requiring new exploration permits.
- The UK government has banned new exploration licences in UK waters but told the sector it would replace the EPL by 2030 or earlier if the price floor is triggered.
Why it matters: The OEUK report frames its £50bn/111-project ask as essential for UK energy security, yet Uplift's counter that the bulk of remaining UK oil is exported rather than used domestically undercuts that premise — meaning the deadlock over Rosebank and Jackdaw now pits the Treasury's tax take and 180,000 industry jobs against both climate targets and the Labour government's ban on new exploration licences.
Ask SkimNews
