UK offshore oil and gas: continuity or transition in a ‘net-zero basin’?

UK governments have promoted the exploration and production of oil and gas on the UK Continental Shelf for over half a century. Maximising Economic Recovery (MER) is the most recent iteration of this policy objective, adopted in 2016 following the Wood Review and designed to reverse a decline in investment and production in the basin. Efforts to promote new oil and gas production have, over time, increasingly come into tension with the need for rapid and deep decarbonisation and the obligations of the Climate Change Act. Whether this tension can be resolved on the UK Continental Shelf – and if so, how – has been unclear for some time.

Read the full comment piece on the UK Energy Research Centre website.