UK upstream backs IPCC climate report
The August 9 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has won the support of the UK offshore community, UKOG. It said the document would add "new impetus to the transition to low-carbon energy."
The IPCC’s report warned that: “Global warming of 1.5° C and 2° C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”
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OGUK said it agreed with the report's conclusion that the world must urgently move to a future based around low-carbon technologies. It added that the UK was emerging as a centre for the development of these technologies. OGUK said: "The aim is to use new technologies to make these traditional fuels acceptable in our low-carbon future.”
Under the North Sea Transition Deal (NSTD), a partnership with the UK government, the industry has committed to cut emissions from oil and gas production, currently totalling about 18.5mn metric tons/yr to net zero carbon by 2050. Its emissions today are under 5% of the UK total.
OGUK members have taken steps to electrify offshore oil and gas installations or to offset the emissions using forestation and other UN-approved methods. And the licensing body, the Oil & Gas Authority, is clamping down hard on flaring.
Other means of lowering emissions include several carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and blue hydrogen generation projects such as Acorn and the Northern Endurance Partnership. Between them, they enjoy the support of majors such as UK BP, Norwegian Equinor, Anglo-Dutch Shell, US ExxonMobil and Italian Eni.
OGUK CEO Deirdre Michie said the UK depends on oil and gas for up to 75% of its total energy needs. "This is reducing as renewable technologies expand but oil and gas are likely to be needed for many years. This means decarbonising them is likely to be as important as deploying wind, solar and other renewables." But she cited a report by the independent UK agency, Committee for Climate Change (CCC), that said the UK would need oil and gas even after 2050.
OGUK members face opposition to upstream activity, with the Cambo oil-field offshore Scotland coming sharply into focus as the partners' final investment decision is expected this year. In November, Scotland is hosting COP26, the latest in the UN series of conferences to address the problem of global emissions.
Although the Climate Change Committee accepts the UK's need for oil and gas until even after 2050, and Cambo partner Shell says that dropping the project would be mere "virtue-signalling," there are lobby groups who say that approving the field contradicts the UK's objectives.
Meanwhile the government is coming under fire as it has not explained what decarbonising will cost the public in terms of electrification, transport and heating; while the CCC itself has been found out for not being explicit about the costs. It has been ordered to produce its calculations in an early August judgement by the Information Tribunal.