Britain has pledged to hit net zero emissions by 2050.
Energy firms say new output will be part of phased decline.
Activists want halt to new exploration immediately.
LONDON, Oct 19 - Reuters : Britain faces a fossil fuel dilemma: it can burnish its green credentials by halting new oil and gas development in the North Sea, but doing so will leave it more dependent on imported fuel.
How Britain will figure out how to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will be under scrutiny when it hosts the COP 26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland from now on 31 October.
Navigating the route has already proved challenging.
In June 2019, when Britain enshrined its net zero target in Law to 2050, Greenpeace activists steered speedboats towards a BP platform in the North Sea carrying a Climate Emergency banner to try to stop production at Vorlich oilfield.
Neither activism nor legislation broke the development. Production from Vorlich began in November 2020.
Oil majors say new production can be a role in managing decline, while campaigners press for an immediate halt to new projects by publicity stunts and legal action.
The government, meanwhile needs to keep the nation's lights on as it smoothes over volatile energy markets and juggles competing demands over how to achieve its climate goals.
If demand goes away and demand doesn't change that only has one consequence and that is an escalation of price increases, BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said this month.
Britain and other European states have already felt this acutely. Brent crude, a benchmark based on North Sea barrels, is an almost 70% increase this year, while the price of US's benchmark wholesale gas has more than 250% increased.
The challenge caused by falling domestic production and increasing fuel imports has been felt across Europe. The European wholesale gas prices have risen more than 350% this year.
Britain, which could once depend on its own fields for oil and gas to heat its power stations, fuel its cars and fire its houses, has been an energy importer since 2005, having output from the North Sea dwindled.
With the capacity of its gas storage facilities only enough to last the nation a few days, Britain's reliance on just-in-time supplies shipped from Qatar or elsewhere leave it exposed when the market tightens, like now with the surge in demand as economies recover from the COVID 19 pandemic.
For activists, the answer is not turning the taps back on but rather reducing domestic fossil fuel consumption.
We are calling on Boris Johnson to stop pushing through new oil and gas projects, Greenpeace activist Philip Evans, addressing the British Prime Minister who has been pressing other countries to deepen climate commitments before COP 26.
If the government is worried about keeping lights on there are things they can do to decrease demand, Evans said, including improvements to insulation in homes, cleaner public transport and more investment in renewable power generation.
Over 70 scientists and academics have sent an open letter to Johnson this week in the Independent Journal of Britain which called on Johnson to stop allowing investment and licensing for new oil and gas fields, saying that now is the right time to take bold action Britain has made progress in some areas. It is the world's biggest wind power producer - and is expanding this resource rapidly. What is it like to have a wind without power?
Yet, there is an increasing pressure on the fossil fuel industry to take drastic action to curb it's use. The International Energy Agency said in a report that the world must halt new oil and gas projects to achieve the Paris climate summit targets of 2015 aiming to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 compared with pre-industrial levels.
The purity of the IEA's report is excellent, but the reality in practice for countries is about ensuring supply security, Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Reuters in June when she was still Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth.
Norway is not committed to ending North Sea exploration, taking a similar approach to Britain but not Norway, another North Sea producer who has halted new projects.
The British government has, however, managed a decline, with production now half its 1999 peak at about 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day boepd or about 1% of the global oil demand.
Oil and Gas UK OGUK, an industry association, has committed to making the North Sea operationally zero by 2050, which means it aims to increase, capture or offset any residual emissions from extracting oil and gas there.
It said in September that imported production was cheaper and cleaner than domestic gas, given shipping fuel creates emissions and because some other producing nations have poor environmental records.
Making use of indigenous resources helps reduce demand and meet price growth, providing secure supplies with a lower carbon footprint than imports offer, OGUK said.
The British Oil and Gas Authority said gas extracted from the British North Sea had an average emissions intensity of 22 kg carbon dioxide equivalent per barrel of oil equivalent, while imported LNG had an average intensity of 59 kg
However, Greenpeace and other activists say these arguments miss the point: our use of fossil fuels must stop rather than simply trying to make them cleaner.
They have taken campaigning to the courts to push for swifter action.
In one case, Greenpeace attempted to scrap a BP gas field licence from Westminster over its emissions via a Scottish Court - although the action failed.
In another case it is seeking to halt development of the Cambo field off The Shetland Isles, a field part owned by Royal Dutch Shell.
The statue of Evans, in every direction by Greenpeace, is 12 feet oil sprayed. It holds "Boris Johnson" on the gates of Downing Street, calling him out as a monumental climate failure," said Insignia They can expect a lot more greenpeace in the courtroom.