Mastodawn

The narrative that all we need to do to solve our energy crisis is to exploit the North Sea more is undermined by the actual output of those field issued exploration & production licences in the last decade... they're not producing very much at all.

Rather than listen to the fossil fuels lobby what the UK needs to do is really push further with the green transition to renewables & better storage.

Here, Ed Miliband is on the right side of history!

#energy #renewables
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-oil-gas-licences-conservatives

Hundreds of North Sea licences granted by Tories ‘produce only 36 days of gas’

Exclusive: Findings cast doubt on claims new drilling would help cut bills and boost energy security, researchers say

The Guardian

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The Casual Critic 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 it's yet more evidence that we don't have a proper press in this country.

"Drilling more" is a fundamentally unserious proposition, and any politician making it should be scrutinised into small pieces over it. But somehow we're happy to let them get away with the notion that because it's "our" gas it's somehow a solution to an imminent global problem.

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TerryB 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 The Tory cries, here, strike me as being no more than echoes from MAGA. Both being essentially fossil thinking from fossils wanting to turn back the clock to an age where exploitation was seen as OK.

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BashStKid 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 It won't surprise you that the companies are skilled at tax minimisation, not least because they wrote some of the rules.

Most of this is oriented towards having capex spending on a new project, then making use of capital allowances and reduced tax rates prior to project payback, which is a very manipulable variable. Also the rules on depreciation and amortisation can be bent quite a lot.

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BashStKid 2d ago

The end goal is to put the profits somewhere they're not visible to UK taxes or windfall taxes, then turn around and ask for more assistance because their profits are so low. Some of those bad habits are spreading to the offshore windfarm industry, which isn't good.

There's an old joke that the companies are financial traders with a sideline in tax-efficient construction.

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Emeritus Prof Christopher May 2d ago

@BashStKid

Yes, and if only such manipulation was limited to energy - such profit shifting was exactly what has prompted both he OECD & the UN to look to establish global corporation tax agreements (which of course the US has worked hard to water down & wreck).

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BashStKid 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 Indeed, the companies have always been trailblazers for multinationals shrugging off responsibilities.
Ironically, now that so much avoidance focus is of the financial variety, double-Irish and so forth, the companies might evade scrutiny by making actual things. It's hard to regulate a bidding process where the loser is from your country's shipyards and the winner is from a tax-free Gulf state that is a minority partner in the project. (qv windfarm holdups from Hormuz closure)

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Steven Heywood 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6
Mineral licences are tradable permissions to do something which might be unprofitable or impossible and like land ownership the profit lies in their capital value and associated tax efficiencies while their risks lies in their actual use.

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Charlie Stross 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 It's also worth noting that the North Sea fields are 90% depleted. The gold rush was back in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. Our best use for them today is probably compressed air storage using solar/wind to pressurize them (and release through turbines during low renewable times), or for CO2 disposal.

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ohir 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6
> better storage
For the storage we since 1880 have a tech that is being actively buried since around 1990.

I mean C.A. Faure batteries. Their energy density of ~80Wh/dm3 is not that high, but their other properties are ideal for the storage of solar and wind enwrgy. The most important property is that these batteries are practically perpetual - given no planned obsolescence additives were used.

The sulfur cristals buildup can be dealt with either with high-current reformatting or, in pure mechanical way, where the PbSO₄ paste is removed, grinded, then the plate is reconstructed as new. Both processes were performed by "Car Battery Regeneration" shops until industry rediscovered Ca⁺ additive, once upon a time discarded exactly for the reason of impeding regeneration process. Pure Faure's setup is perpetual. In mass storage both regeneration techniques can be fully automated and performed continously, on-site.

I recently did a rough assesment of such storage for the 3TWh battery that could serve whole Germany for 24h period. It got at 10bn € for 3TWh storage, in 100k x 1 x 4m casing ;)[details soon]

United Kingdom subsidizes Big Oil, **annually** twice to this ammount (£18bn). UK would have some 5TWh storage facility (under M1/M4 verge) for those money.

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/resource/fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-uk-who-pays-who-profits/

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ohir 2d ago

@ChrisMayLA6
8kWh/m3, lead: 7kg/dm3, 7t/m3. Target capacity: 3TWh @ 80%.
Lead once sealed in the battery plate/case no longer poses a toxic threat to the environment.

Highway verge 4m wide with same 1m high plates under give 32MWh per km. We can store our target 3TWh under some 100km of your nearest highway unused otherwise verge. The grass can stay over the battery compartment covers. If we'd put our battery under highway sides, we could have 3TWh spread over some 50km.

Raw material costs: For 3TWh you would need 2.800.000t of lead. Considering current data [1] it would be 15-20 years of the WASTE tailings processing. I.e. getting all that lead off the landfills where it goes now. If copper ore processing in Europe, especially in Poland, would care more about lead output we probably could do such storage in 10 years. Sulfur now is a waste byproduct of the natural gas purification facilities.

P.S. For local storage facility we can use existing parking lots. The suburban mall parking lot of 30x50m stuffed 1.5m under surface with 1m high plates gives 12MWh max, 10MWh safe (unlike with car batteries, the static setup allows for 80-85% discharge).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972300654X