North Sea emissions falling short of long-term targets, warns NSTA

EMISSIONS reductions from oil and gas assets in the UK North Sea are falling too slowly to meet long-term targets, despite recent progress, a new report has warned.

The report, published last week by independent government-funded body the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), said that UK offshore oil and gas installations are on a trajectory to miss 2040 and 2050 emissions reductions targets. NSTA found that although emissions have fallen for five consecutive years, progress is “lagging behind ambitions in the longer term”.

Total emissions from North Sea installations are down 34% compared to the 2018 level of 18.1m tCO2e. This places the transition comfortably ahead of the 2027 target of a 25% reduction. NSTA’s “business as usual” projections see the North Sea meeting the 2030 target of a 50% reduction. However, the report forecasts that the 90% reduction by 2040 and net zero by 2050 targets will not be met.

Oil and gas production accounts for 3.3% of the UK’s total emissions, the majority of which come from offshore installations in the North Sea. Roughly 80% of emissions from oil and gas production stem from gas-fired power generation, with most of the remainder coming from flaring and venting.

Emissions in 2024 were 11.8m tCO2e, including 2.2m tCO2e from terminals, a 7% reduction compared to 2023. However, emissions intensity remained unchanged at 24 kgCO2e per barrel of production, indicating net emissions reductions were largely due to declining production rather than active decarbonisation programmes. NSTA reported that “reductions in emissions kept pace with the drop in production”, noting that since 2018, just over half of the emissions reductions came from facilities that were still online in 2024. Around 50% of reductions from online assets were driven by decreases in gas and diesel combustion.

The report warned that “mature basins with declining production are at greater risk of rapid rises in emissions intensity”. Hedvig Ljungerud, director of strategy at NSTA, said that operators need to “commit to serious, large-scale investments in emissions reduction”.

Ljungerud added: “Bringing down production emissions by more than a third in six years shows the North Sea oil and gas industry has been getting a lot right, reflecting its commitment.

“However, if operators lose focus on the task at hand, the projections are clear that UK production will become less clean and less competitive compared with imports over time. While the UK still consumes oil and gas, the way it is produced must become progressively cleaner.”

It’s electrifying

Electrification of oil and gas installations has been held as a promising way to reduce emissions by NSTA, which says “it is vital that more electrification and low-carbon power projects reach final investments decisions in the near-term”.

The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) dealt a blow to NSTA ambitions last month when, according to Energy Voice, the company withdrew from plans to power its Buzzard oil platform in the North Sea with floating offshore wind turbines. NSTA does not comment on commercial decisions by operators, but its report said that “unnecessary delays” in achieving decarbonising power generation “will diminish the case for electrification”.

The role of offshore electrification in meeting broader carbon targets remains a subject of debate. Tom Baxter, an IChemE Fellow and visiting chemical engineering professor at the University of Strathclyde, wrote in TCE in July that electrification offers poor value for money, arguing “it makes sense to transfer the money the oil and gas companies would have spent on electrification to more cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction measures”.

NSTA has revised down its estimate of emissions savings from electrification, cutting the projected 2024 figure from 17m tCO2e to 13.4m tCO2e in its latest report.