Ed Miliband forced to look again at North Sea oil and gas June 19, 2025 The UK government is mulling over a change to the law to oil and gas projects in the North Sea in a drive to lower energy bills. Michael Shanks, a minister working under energy secretary Ed Miliband, will be visiting Scotland on Thursday with a decision set to be made on the government’s intervention on [...]
North Sea windfall tax causing ‘irreversible damage’ says oil giant May 27, 2025 The boss of Enquest has slammed the windfall tax on oil and gas firms as doing “irreversible damage” to the industry and “driving job losses across the sector”. Amjad Bseisu, Enquest’s chief executive, called for the North Sea tax to be scrapped in an operations update on Tuesday after claiming it makes the UK a [...]
Trump condemns UK net zero push May 23, 2025 Donald Trump has publicly criticised the UK’s net zero policy, saying it is disincentivising oil drilling and needlessly inflating energy prices. In an unusual intervention, the US President said that the UK’s North Sea reserves still had “a century of drilling left”, which if tapped would help bring costs down, “and fast”. “I strongly recommend [...]
Cut taxes for BP and Shell to protect UK from Trump’s trade war, Rachel Reeves told February 6, 2025 Oil giants such as BP and Shell who operate in the North Sea should be given huge tax breaks to help protect the UK against Donald Trump’s burgeoning trade war, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been told. Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce is calling on the UK government to reduce the 78 per cent tax [...]
Ex-BP boss says Labour is ‘ignoring’ UK’s energy needs November 12, 2024 The new government’s decision to divest from North Sea oil and set up a state-owned renewable energy company is the “last thing” it should be doing, the former chief executive of BP has said. Bob Dudley, who ran the British petrochemical giant BP for ten years, told City AM that energy secretary Ed Miliband was [...]
HMRC takes Royal Bank of Canada to the UK’s highest court over corporation tax November 4, 2024 The tax agency has taken the Canada's largest bank to the UK Supreme Court over corporation tax payments on a North Sea oil production
The Notebook: On the lookout for common sense at Labour Party Conference September 23, 2024 As Labour Party Conference kicks off, Matthew Elliott lays out what he is on the lookout for (including his favourite Liverpool pub).
Neo Energy slows down £900m North Sea project due to windfall tax September 2, 2024 One of the North Sea’s largest oil and gas project has been plunged into uncertainty after its operator announced it was slowing down investment in light of “fiscal and regulatory uncertainty”. Neo Energy had planned to start work on the £900m Buchan project – expected to produce a peak of 35,000 barrels of oil a [...]
Future of Rosebank in doubt as UK drops challenge to judicial review August 29, 2024 The future of Britain’s largest untapped oil field, Rosebank, has been thrown in to doubt after the new government said it would not challenge a judicial review. The decision affects the field which is just off the Shetland Islands, as well as Jackdaw, another untapped site 150 miles east of Aberdeen. Legal challenges against the [...]
Labour’s North Sea windfall tax plans branded a ‘blunt response’ that will hammer businesses across the UK August 22, 2024 The government’s plans for North Sea oil and gas are a “blunt response” that could jeopardise hundreds of thousands of jobs not just in the energy sector, several of the industry’s leading figures have warned. In an open letter to the Treasury, over 40 companies with operations in the North Sea voiced their “grave concern” [...]