Healey’s Budget prices in wave of fresh North Sea 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. Any approvals would not be in breach of the government s 2024 manifesto promise to ban new drilling licences in the North Sea. But they would represent a major softening of its stance