I was recently contacted by a colleague from my days in the 1980s and 90s when I worked as an engineer in the offshore oil and gas sector. He remains in the industry and got in touch with a question about whether the UK should develop more of its own oil and gas rather than relying on imports. His question touches on some of the most persistent and consequential arguments surrounding fossil-fuel production, so I thought my response might be worth sharing more widely. I subsequently asked whether he would be comfortable with me anonymising his question and publishing it, together with my response, online. He agreed.

Hi Kevin. Sorry to bother you but…

As a person whose opinion I very much value, can you please explain to me why the UK producing its own gas is less acceptable to the Greens (and others) than importing it from America and West Africa.

It seems to be the same situation unfolding as manufacturing, where we supposedly “reduced the UK carbon footprint” by simply exporting it to other countries where our products are now made.

Not many people disagree about the need to transition away from fossil fuels (even in the offshore industry). But, it would be quite nice to do that in a sensible fashion rather than use it as an opportunity to virtue signal to the rest of the planet when we really aren’t being virtuous at all…

Is there something I’m missing?

Surely the main thing we should do is reduce our demand. Not simply get the dirty stuff from another country. 

I’ve sent this question to a number of people with links to ‘green’ campaign groups and have received no satisfactory answers.

My last hope...

Headlines (taken from my reply)

• “If the UK develops additional oil and gas production, that does not mean an equivalent quantity of production elsewhere automatically stops. It adds additional fossil-fuel supply to an international market. There is no mechanism whereby developing new UK production causes another producer to permanently leave an equivalent volume of hydrocarbons in the ground.”

• “It isn’t a question of whether British gas is marginally less destructive than American gas. There is no atmospheric exemption for British hydrocarbons.”

• So I don’t think the relevant question is: “Why should we import their gas or oil rather than produce our own?”

• It is: “Why are we still arguing about how to produce more oil and gas when the international commitments we have made require us to reduce rapidly the fossil fuels we burn?”

• And, perhaps most importantly: “Who benefits from keeping that question off the table?”

My reply in full:

There’s a lot packed into your question, but I think the answer becomes unequivocal if we frame it around the UK’s international climate commitments and, ultimately, what level of climatic disruption we are prepared to bequeath to our own children, future generations and other species. This is a profoundly moral question that has been deliberately excised from much of the debate. The argument about whether UK oil and gas is preferable to American or West African oil and gas illustrates just how successful fossil-fuel executives and their shills have been in undermining a meaningful discussion. Angels and pinheads come to mind.

Back to our commitments. Since 1992, countries have committed through the UNFCCC to reduce emissions so as to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The Paris Agreement subsequently gave that commitment a quantitative meaning: to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.

Since Paris, the evidence of increasingly severe climate impacts and the risks associated with further warming have strengthened the case for staying as close to 1.5°C as possible. The Glasgow Climate Pact reaffirmed the importance of 1.5°C, while the 2025 ICJ Advisory Opinion has further clarified the legal significance of 1.5°C as the primary climate obligation.

The crucial point is that 1.5 and 2°C are global temperature commitments. The atmosphere does not distinguish between a tonne of CO₂ released from a North Sea gas field, a US shale well or a gas field in West Africa. What matters is the cumulative amount of greenhouse gas, particularly CO₂, entering the atmosphere.

That brings us to the central issue in your question: if the UK doesn’t produce the oil and gas, won’t somebody else simply produce it and sell it to us? So, isn’t using our own ‘cleaner’ oil and gas better from an emissions perspective?

The answer is no.

If the UK develops additional oil and gas production, that does not mean an equivalent quantity of production elsewhere automatically stops. It adds additional fossil-fuel supply to an international market. There is no mechanism whereby developing new UK production causes another producer to permanently leave an equivalent volume of hydrocarbons in the ground.

And this is where I think a successful piece of fossil-fuel industry messaging has taken hold.

For decades, the industry has worked extremely hard to shift the climate conversation away from whether we need to reduce fossil-fuel production and towards questions about whose fossil fuels we should produce, how cleanly we can produce them, and how long we supposedly need them as part of a “transition”.

This has not simply happened organically. Major fossil-fuel companies have invested heavily in lobbying, advertising, think tanks, cultural institutions, universities, political activities, sporting sponsorships and media initiatives, helping to shape expertise, public debate and policy in ways that protect their interests. They have repeatedly sought to establish themselves not as an industry whose core product is driving the problem, but as a legitimate and necessary participant in solving it.

That distinction matters.

I have less of an issue with people working in the offshore industry. No doubt many recognise that the energy system ultimately has to change, even if they expect that change to come considerably later than it needs to. My concern lies much more with the executive and institutional interests of the industry – those with the power to shape its direction, and whose commercial responsibilities and personal financial interests are tied to maximising the extraction and sale of hydrocarbons.

There is an enormous difference between saying, “we recognise that society eventually needs to move beyond fossil fuels”, and actually supporting the policies required to reduce fossil-fuel extraction rapidly enough to stay within even a weak interpretation of the Paris Agreement’s temperature limits.

The industry has become extremely adept at saying the former while lobbying against the latter.

And this is where I think your comment that “not many people disagree about the need to transition away from fossil fuels” needs unpacking. I agree that almost everyone now accepts the phrase. But the phrase has become almost meaningless unless we ask how quickly and from what starting point.

If we say we need to transition away from fossil fuels while simultaneously developing new oil and gas wells and even fields, maintaining or increasing production, and building infrastructure designed to keep hydrocarbons flowing for decades, then “transition” becomes little more than a rhetorical device for delaying stringent action. In doing so, we lock in a world of escalating climate disruption, deepening food and water insecurity, increasing displacement and growing conflict.

As I repeatedly find myself saying: look at our commitments and then do the maths.

We are already experiencing the consequences of our leaders choosing to forgo the 1.5°C commitment, with increasingly severe impacts evident in the UK and far more devastating consequences elsewhere. In the Global South, these impacts are already threatening the livelihoods—and, in many cases, the lives—of people, disproportionately people of colour, who have contributed least to the accumulation of greenhouse gases. This is not an unfortunate accident or an unavoidable feature of climate change. It reflects profound inequalities in wealth, power, historical responsibility and political voice.

The remaining global carbon budget for even “well below 2°C” is now extraordinarily small relative to the scale of the fossil-fuel system we have built. Even using relatively generous assumptions, the amount of CO₂ that can still be emitted while retaining a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 2°C represents under twelve years of current global emissions. I suspect that the forthcoming IPCC assessment will see carbon budgets reduced considerably, such that 2°C will be locked into the system by the early 2030s unless emissions fall rapidly.

This comes back to our moral code, our value system and just what sort of parents, uncles, sisters, friends, colleagues and citizens we really are. The mirror’s image reveals a deeply troubling truth.

It is against this context – our commitments, the science, the maths and our morals – that I see no justification for opening any new oil and gas fields anywhere.

It isn’t a question of whether British gas is marginally less destructive than American gas. There is no atmospheric exemption for British hydrocarbons.

There are differences in the emissions associated with extracting, processing and transporting different fossil fuels, and those differences matter when calculating lifecycle emissions. But they do not turn new fossil-fuel development into a climate solution. A difference in upstream emissions does not somehow cancel out the huge quantity of CO₂ released when the oil and gas is subsequently burned.

The same applies to the idea that producing our own oil and gas is somehow more responsible than importing it. If we genuinely want to transition away from fossil fuels, the objective has to be to reduce total fossil-fuel consumption and production, not to ensure that the fossil fuels we consume carry a British flag.

I certainly agree with one part of your question:

The priority should be reducing demand.

But that actually undermines rather than supports the case for new UK production. If demand is to be reduced rapidly enough to align with our commitments, we progressively need less gas from Britain, America, West Africa, Norway and everywhere else.

The argument that we need more domestic production because otherwise we will import more oil and gas is essentially an argument for maintaining fossil-fuel demand. It takes the failure to reduce demand and uses it as the justification for producing more.

That is the circularity at the heart of the argument.

There is also an important equity dimension. If global fossil-fuel production has to decline rapidly, it does not follow that every country should do so at exactly the same rate. The UNFCCC* and subsequent agreements explicitly recognise equity and “common but differentiated responsibilities.

A wealthy country with high per-capita income and a diversified economy is in a very different position from a much poorer country whose public finances and employment are heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues. Countries such as the UK, US and Norway have highly diversified economies, with oil and gas a relatively small part of the economy, and therefore should be among those phasing out fossil-fuel production earliest and fastest. Poorer producer states where fossil-fuel revenue makes a major contribution to the economy will need more time and, crucially, international support to make that transition.

But again, that is an argument for differentiated rates of phase-out, not for continued expansion of fossil-fuel production anywhere. (for a detailed report on this issue see: Phaseout Pathways for Fossil Fuel Production Within Paris-compliant Carbon Budgets).

And this is perhaps the most important point.

The industry has spent decades telling us that it accepts the climate science while simultaneously working to delay the policies that follow from it. As the scientific case has become impossible to ignore, the language has adapted: from questioning climate change, to questioning its severity, to questioning the need for rapid action, to promoting “net zero”, “transition fuels”, “carbon capture”, “cleaner hydrocarbons”, “negative emission technologies” and now the idea that our fossil fuels are somehow preferable to their fossil fuels.

The language changes. The underlying commercial interest doesn’t.

And the consequences extend far beyond the continued extraction of oil and gas. By repeatedly presenting fossil fuels as part of the solution the industry and its shills have distorted the wider climate mitigation debate. They have shifted attention away from the fundamental question of how rapidly we must reduce fossil-fuel use and towards a succession of technical, economic and geopolitical arguments that make continued extraction appear reasonable, necessary or even virtuous.

Some of these arguments have now been absorbed far beyond the industry itself, including by experts, politicians, commentators and, understandably, people working in the sector who have repeatedly been told that their industry is a key part of the solution.

That is why I think we have to be ruthless about stripping away the rhetoric and returning to first principles.

What have we committed to? How much carbon can we still emit? How rapidly do emissions therefore need to fall? And what does that imply for fossil-fuel production?

Once you do that, the answer becomes unequivocal.

If we take the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement and the ICJ seriously, there is no climate case for developing new fossil-fuel resources. We need to rapidly phase out all production (for energy), with wealthy producer nations taking the lead and with poorer producer nations supported through a fairer and differentiated transition.

So I don’t think the relevant question is:

“Why should we import their gas or oil rather than produce our own?”

It is:

“Why are we still arguing about how to produce more oil and gas when the international commitments we have made require us to reduce rapidly the fossil fuels we burn?”

And, perhaps most importantly:

Who benefits from keeping that question off the table?

That, I think, is precisely why the industry’s decades-long investment in lobbying, buying political influence, co-opting academia and academics, capturing the arts and sport, and spending millions on carefully cultivated public messaging deserves far greater scrutiny. This is not simply an industry defending its commercial interests. It is a sustained effort to shape what society considers politically possible, economically acceptable and ultimately inevitable, and in doing so, it has profoundly undermined our ability to have an honest debate about what genuine climate mitigation actually requires.