Rishi Sunak facing renewed pressure over plans to ‘max out’ North Sea oil

Dithering on renewable energy and insulation will leave people in Britain ‘colder and poorer’, campaigners warn

Rishi Sunak is facing further attacks on his plans to expand oil and gas exploration in the North Sea this week. The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill – to be debated in the Commons on Monday – has already triggered widespread protests, including the resignation of Chris Skidmore, a former Conservative energy minister.

The bill aims to boost fossil fuel extraction by establishing a new system under which licences for North Sea oil and gas projects will be awarded annually.

Green groups and analysts are lining up to criticise it. UpLift, which campaigns for green energy, pointed out that the bill, which the government says will “max out” the UK’s reserves, will actually result in only a 2% rise in North Sea gas output. “The remaining 98% of gas demand will come from existing North Sea fields,” its analysis finds.

It adds that just one 1.3 gigawatt windfarm would generate more than enough electricity to offset the gas that would be lost if no new licences were awarded under the bill.

“Sunak, like his predecessor Liz Truss, is obsessing over oil and gas, but dithering on renewables and insulation which will boost UK energy security and lower bills,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of UpLift. “And it’s making people in this country colder and poorer.”

This point was backed by Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “Investments in new North Sea developments will not make a significant difference to energy bills; they will have relatively high operating costs; and they will make it more difficult for the world to halt climate change.”

By contrast, investing in clean British energy and electrifying the economy, with heat pumps and electric vehicles, would reduce dependence on insecure and expensive fossil fuels, Ward added.

A new report by a group of leading economists including Nicholas Stern, criticises the government for allowing too much investment to continue to flow into unsustainable economies such as the development of new oil and gas fields and the construction of homes and offices that are not energy efficient or climate-resilient.

“Investing in the opportunities afforded by the global transition to an efficient, resilient and inclusive economy needs to be a bigger part of restoring productivity and output growth for the UK to gain a competitive lead in the innovative markets of the 21st century,” they state.

These criticisms follow a letter from the all-party parliamentary group for climate change which says: “Just last month, as the UK’s second warmest year on record concluded, the UK joined other countries in signing the UAE consensus at Cop28 and thus pledged to transition way from fossil fuels.

“However, this bill is diametrically opposed to that agreement. Instead of honouring the promises we’ve made to our allies and partners at Cop28 this bill further weakens any claim the UK makes to be a world leader in tackling climate change.”

For his part, Skidmore said before his resignation that he could not vote for legislation that “clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas” and would show that the UK is “rowing ever further back from its climate commitments.”

Cover photo: A climate activist protesting in London against the Rosebank oil field project in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images