Business Outlook 2022

Offshore Energies The UK’s offshore operators are developing four key new technologies to help the UK achieve carbon neutrality

This report picks out some of those foreseeable problems. In particular, it highlights how the UK faces some very immediate choices about how to safeguard its future energy security. Those choices stem directly from the fact that output from the UK Continental Shelf, the source of much of UK’s oil and gas for the last five decades, is in rapid decline. This report warns that production will fall by up to 15%/year unless there is rapid investment in new infrastructure. This decline is much faster than the predicted reduction in UK energy demand so, if there is no such investment then, by 2030, we

will be reliant on other countries for at least 80% of our gas and 70% of our oil. That gap will have to be filled by imports, meaning the UK will become ever more dependent on other countries. This is already happening. The report reveals how, for the first time, Norway has become the UK’s primary source of gas – supplying us with more than came from our own continental shelf in 2021. Norway is a good and reliable friend to the UK, but it has other customers that it is also committed to. If our needs increase, we will have to find other sources and suppliers. The International Energy Agency has

BUSINESS OUTLOOK 2022

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