UK Budget Signals Wave of New North Sea Oil and Gas Drilling

John Healey's Budget has assumed the government will approve North Sea discovery drilling projects that produce in excess of a billion barrels of oil and gas, in the clearest sign yet that ministers plan to rubber-stamp a wave of new drilling after Jackdaw and Rosebank. In its scorecard for the Chancellor's maiden fiscal event, the Office for Budget Responsibility accounted for a boost in tax receipts from the "development of new fields" that not only include the controversial Rosebank oil field but also other "future discoveries".

The fiscal watchdog used North Sea Transition Authority NSTA estimates that assume the government will green light the extraction of all the North Sea's so-called 'prospective resources' the regulator's best guess of untapped reserves available in current licences.