French energy giant wins legal battle to shut down North Sea oil fields

TotalEnergies will close their Gryphon floating production platform – which is anchored 200 miles north-east of Aberdeen

Ed Miliband’s net zero push has helped a French energy giant win a legal battle to decommission a key North Sea energy hub – killing off five oil fields in the process.

On Tuesday, Paris-based TotalEnergies won a High Court victory to close the Gryphon floating production platform which is anchored 200 miles north-east of Aberdeen.

Judges relied on Mr Miliband’s net zero targets as justification to close the site, backing an original decision by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which had been opposed by rival oil groups.

The Gryphon produced up to 2pc of UK oil and gas production, and its closure will mean 200 job losses with an estimated 9m barrels of known oil reserves left in the ground, plus £150m in lost tax revenue for the Treasury.

Total is cutting back operations in UK waters linked to Mr Miliband’s crackdown on offshore oil and gas as well as the 78pc tax on offshore profits imposed by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor.

Its decommissioning plans were originally approved by the NSTA partly because reduced oil and gas production would cut UK greenhouse gas emissions and so help achieve net zero.

However, they were strongly opposed by Nobel Upstream, which used the Gryphon to store output from two adjacent oil fields – and wanted Total to keep in use.

Nobel has now lost its judicial review of the NSTA’s decision – opening the way for the Gryphon vessel to be removed and the underlying oil fields permanently decommissioned.

The judgment said: “By taking account of the societal costs of carbon [emissions] the NSTA produced a more accurate assessment of the value to the UK of extracting the petroleum and so assisted the Secretary of State to achieve net zero because an emission-generating activity, the full societal cost of which outweighed its benefits, would not continue.”

Richard Tice, Reform UK’s energy spokesman, said: “This is a shocking, negligent decision by a judge overly focused on net zero.

“The consequence is the loss of hundreds of jobs, millions of barrels of oil and hundreds of millions worth of value to the UK economy.”

Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, said: “We know we’ll be needing oil and gas for decades to come so we should be making the most of our resources in the North Sea. ”

A Nobel spokesman said the company was deeply disappointed and warned the case would set a precedent that could see many more such closures.

“This decision supporting the shutting in of some 12,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of oil and gas production will only hasten the demise of the North Sea, where the tax and regulatory regimes are already punitive,” he said.

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The Gryphon is a giant floating production, storage and offloading vessel over the Gryphon North and Gryphon South oil and gas fields.

It also receives output from two Nobel oil fields – the “Maclure” and “Ballindalloch” – with all its gas exported directly to the UK mainland, where it enters the national gas grid to support power stations and heat millions of homes.

Production was halted by Total earlier this year and the final closure decision marks the latest blow to the North Sea, which is in rapid decline amid the Government’s retreat from oil and gas.

It comes after Donald Trump hit out at the UK’s taxes on North Sea oil while in Scotland last month, saying the resource is a “treasure chest” for the country.

Derek Thomson, Unite’s Scottish secretary, said: “Thousands of jobs in the oil and gas sector are under threat. The deep concern for Unite is that TotalEnergies’ plan for the Gryphon remains premature and the judicial review’s outcome could have a domino effect across the North Sea.”

Michelle Thomson, the SNP MSP for Falkirk East, said: “It’s terrible news that TotalEnergies intend to shut down their floating storage and associated oil fields. This can only result in the loss of jobs that will have a much wider impact across the entire sector and undermine any attempts to have a just transition.”

TotalEnergies did not reply to requests for comment.

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