Page 11 - EurOil Week 35 2021

EurOil POLICY EurOil

Oil tycoon Wood urges against

end to oil exploration

UK UK oil tycoon Ian Wood has warned that it resources,” he said. “And if we import it we’ll have
would be “absolutely crazy” for the UK to call more potent gas and we’ll do more damage to the
Wood said new fields time on oil exploration, adding that such as a environment – it would be, frankly, absolutely
needed to be developed policy would be “detrimental, environmentally.” crazy. It would be detrimental, environmentally.”
to avoid overreliance on The UK government faces calls to adopt a After retiring as chairman of Wood Group
imports. tougher stance towards continued oil and gas in 2012, Wood went on to write the Maximis-
extraction, with the head of Labour opposition ing Economic Recovery that gave ministers
party Sir Keir Starmer recently urging a “hard- advice on how to maximise recovery from the
edged timetable” to be set for ceasing produc- North Sea Shelf. His latest comments come amid
tion. UK authorities has revised oil and gas heightened pressure by green groups on the
licensing policy to place a greater emphasis on government to block development of the large
the environment, but have said exploration will Cambo oilfield west of Shetland. Royal Dutch
continue for years to come. Shell and Siccar Point Energy aim to recover
Wood, who used to run one of the world’s 170mn barrels of oil from Cambo’s first phase.
biggest oil services companies that bears his sur- Regulators are currently weighing up whether to
name, told the BBC on August 25 that new fields grant it a licence.
needed to be developed to reduce reliance on oil Wood also warned of the significant impact
and gas imports from countries with looser envi- there would be to the economy of north-east
ronmental restrictions. Opponents of domestic Scotland if oil and gas output was curtailed.
upstream restrictions often point to the higher “Right now there’s 71,000 jobs in oil and gas
emissions from having to transport oil and gas in Scotland. And if they went out there quickly
from overseas over distances rather than produc- then these jobs would go. Not only that, we’d
ing the fuels at home. have a massive balance of payments issue as well,”
Wood argues that continued drilling and Wood said. “It does not make sense from any
production is a greener option than curtailing point of view. You’re better from the economic
supply. point of view, from the environment point of
“If we don’t have our own oil and gas we’ll have view, from the jobs point of view, to carry on the
to import it, because we just don’t have any other path we’re on.” ™

Week 35 02•September•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P11