Largest untapped UK oil field approved for development amid environmental backlash
A view of Sullom Voe Terminal, an oil and gas terminal in the Shetland Islands on September 2021.
Adrian Dennis | Afp | Getty Images
LONDON — British regulators on Wednesday gave approval for Norway’s energy giant Equinor to develop the controversial U.K. offshore Rosebank field in the North Sea, just off the northwest coast of the Shetland Islands.
The North Sea Transition Authority said it has also given the necessary consent.
The U.K. government said it had given operator Equinor and British energy company Ithaca Energy — which hold respective 80% and 20% stakes in the field — permission to proceed following “extensive scrutiny by the regulators,” including regarding the environmental impact of the development.
Ithaca Energy shares jumped 7% by 9 a.m. London time, following the announcement, with Equinor shares higher by roughly 1%. Rosebank stands as the largest untapped field in the U.K.
Equinor says the project will be pursued in two phases and estimates it will create £8.1 billion ($9.8 billion) of direct investment. The company expects the field’s start-up stage to take place over 2026-27 and estimates that Rosebank’s recoverable resources are over 300 million barrels of oil for its two phases.
“We are investing on our world-leading renewable energy but, as the independent Climate Change Committee recognise, we will need oil and gas as part of that mix on the path to net zero and so it makes sense to use our own supplies from North Sea fields such as Rosebank,” U.K. Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho said in a statement.
Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt said: “We are accelerating renewables and nuclear power, but will still need oil and gas for decades to come — so let’s get more of what we need from within British waters.”
The Rosebank development has faced repeated delays and intense public backlash amid questions over its environmental impact.
Burning Rosebank’s oil and gas would produce over 200 million metric tons of CO2, #StopRosebank campaign activists say, on Wednesday pledging in a statement that the “fight is far from over” and the group will “pressure the UK to reverse this terrible decision, and use every tool we can to stop this field,” as “climate justice demands nothing less.”
Green Party Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas, echoed these feelings on Wednesday.
“This is morally obscene. It won’t improve energy security or lower bills – but it will shatter our climate commitments & demolish global leadership. Govt is complicit in this climate crime – as is Labour unless they pledge to do all possible to revoke it,” she said on the X social media platform, previously known as Twitter.
The Rosebank development approval comes after Britain in July confirmed plans to issue hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, despite its stated target to decarbonize all of the national sectors of the economy by 2050.
Compounding concerns over Westminster’s commitment to transition, British PM Rishi Sunak last week revealed his government would postpone a ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars by five years, to a new 2035 deadline.
“We don’t support Rosebank,” the opposition Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said in a televised Sky News interview in the wake of the announcement. “We think the priority for the country should be transitioning away from fossil fuels, partly because of the volatility of the price in fossil fuels, and we’ve seen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just what that’s meant, not just for heating prices, but for electricity, because our electricity system is pinned, it’s matched to that gas price. So real energy security will only come from moving to nuclear, to renewables, to technologies that will insulate us from those pressures.”
Energy security has stepped into the forefront of the European policy agenda after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions deprived regional buyers of Moscow’s seaborne crude and refined oil products.
“By approving Rosebank, Rishi Sunak has confirmed he couldn’t care less about climate change. As we’ve heard repeatedly, our world can no longer sustain new oil and gas drilling. And when we’re witnessing scorching temperatures, wildfires, devastating flooding and heatwaves in our seas, it could not be clearer that this is a decision by the Prime Minister to add more fuel to the fire,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the Uplift activism group, in an emailed statement.
“Rosebank will do nothing to lower fuel bills or boost UK energy security. ”
Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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