Britain’s first oil and gas licensing round since 2019 attracted 115 bids, compared with 104 in the last round, with licenses likely to be awarded from the second quarter, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) said on Tuesday.

Britain’s government is looking to boost domestic hydrocarbon output as Europe weans itself off Russian fuel, but climate activists have criticised the licensing round, and Greenpeace is working on legal challenge.

Britain’s recent increase in a windfall tax on the oil and gas sector has pushed the UK North Sea’s biggest oil and gas producer, Harbour HBR.L, to shun the licensing round.

Still, the round attracted 115 bids from 76 companies for 258 out of 931 blocks on offer – compared with 104 bids for 245 blocks out of 768 on offer in 2019, the NSTA said.

The British North Sea, home to the global Brent benchmark grade LCOc1, is an aging basin where oil and gas production has fallen from a 1999 peak of around 4.4 million barrels of oil equivalent (boed) to around 1.5 million boed.

While hosting the 2021 COP26 climate summit, Britain decided not to join an alliance of countries vowing to stop new oil and gas projects on their territory.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Josie Kao)