Why Energy Security is an Engineering Challenge, Not a Drilling One                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

The arguments surrounding North Sea gas and oil are intensifying as this week’s headlines tell the very controversial story of industrial groups lobbying the UK’s next Prime Minister for drilling licenses; claiming these will produce energy “for generations to come”, show a commitment to our nation’s skilled workforces and support UK manufacturing.

And, whilst some of this may be true - committing to our skilled workforces and supporting homegrown manufacturing is of course incredibly important - North Sea drilling is directly opposed to the government’s Net Zero targets, and has already been heavily criticised by carbon neutral campaigners.

So, what’s the truth about North Sea gas and oil production?

It was only a few months ago that we wrote an extensive piece on the North Sea Gas Gap as a response to Sky News’ exploration of the same topic - where Sky landed on the opinion that we need to move away from imported gas and towards domestic production to significantly lower household energy bills and achieve energy security.

And, although this is partially a sentiment experts from across various industries and sectors can actually agree upon - domestic energy production could indeed lower household bills and see the UK achieve long term energy security - it’s not the North Sea we need to be looking toward. In fact, it's in entirely the opposite direction.

In reality, the North Sea is a mature basin where 90% of extractable gas has already been depleted, and it will only become increasingly difficult and expensive to reach what’s left; we’re simply playing a game of diminishing returns and so, the idea of the North Sea holding energy for “generations to come” is an exaggeration.

It does, however, come with a very quick road to market and, as such, provides a short term solution to a longer term problem. That being, if we were to continue drilling in the North Sea for the small amount of extractable gas still available, we would be able to decrease the amount of imported gas we rely on, replacing it with the much more favourable domestically produced gas. However, not by as much as you think.

At the crux of the breaking issues in the North Sea are the Jackdaw and Rosebank gas projects which, if you’ve read any of this week’s headlines relating to this very subject, you will be familiar with.

Jackdaw is projected to meet more than 6% of the UK’s natural gas demand this coming winter which equates to approximately 1.4 million homes and, over its nine to 12-year lifetime, critics argue the field would only provide roughly 2% of total UK gas demand.

This means that, even if the Jackdaw project goes ahead, the UK would still be heavily dependent on imported gas, reaching around 94% by 2050.

Realistically, then, the real vulnerability is: import dependency. And, to successfully move away from this, we need to look at more sustainable - i.e. long term - solutions than simply drilling for natural gas in fields that are already largely empty and selling those resources on the global market which, of course, does very little to shield the UK consumer from rising energy bills that come directly from international price spikes.  

The solution, then, is to focus inward and look at the infrastructure and resources we have on the island in which we live, not around or beyond it.

We can support our skilled workforce, commit to UK manufacturing, significantly reduce our reliance on imported gas, and reduce our energy bills if we do two things:

• Decouple renewable energy from the price of Brent Crude Oil

• Turn our efforts toward EfW facilities and AD plants

The gap isn’t just about total volume; it’s about the need for dispatchable power, and having a variable mix of energy sources providing gas to the National Grid.

As such renewables are vital, but building a system that balances those with domestic, reliable reserves (like EfW) is the only way to break the fossil fuel dependency cycle.  

Ultimately, we must stop viewing energy security as a political 'drill or drop' binary and start treating it as the complex engineering challenge it truly is; delivering the energy system we need - one that is resilient, dispatchable, and truly domestic - requires more than just winning a licensing battle; it requires rigorous technical due diligence, precise interface management, and the rapid deployment of proven assets like EfW and AD.

We have the capacity to build a robust, circular energy economy, but it won't happen by accident.

It will be built by engineers who can navigate the complexities of site delivery, not by policy-makers chasing short-term headlines.

The infrastructure of the future must be built on technical capability and long-term investment, not on the hope that we can squeeze a few more years out of an exhausted seabed.