Overview

• Kemi Badenoch used the Offshore Europe conference in Aberdeen to vow to lift Labour’s ban on new exploration licences, restore overseas support for fossil-fuel projects, and refocus the regulator with a mandate to maximise extraction.
• Labour’s Ed Miliband condemned the plan as a return to a failed approach that would not cut bills, reaffirming the government’s position to allow existing fields to run but not issue new exploration licences.
• Offshore Energies UK’s 2025 report says the UK could rely on imports for about 70% of oil and gas by 2030 without sustained investment, urges scrapping the energy profits levy, and argues output could rise from roughly 4.3bn to 7.5bn BOE with fiscal and regulatory changes.
• The North Sea Transition Authority estimates around 3.75bn BOE remain untapped with output falling about 10% a year, and analysts say new drilling would only marginally reduce imports and would not lower prices set on global markets.
• NSTA’s latest monitoring shows production emissions down 34% since 2018, including a 7% drop in 2024 and record-low flaring, but it calls for large-scale electrification and other investments to meet 2040–2050 decarbonisation goals.