UK to drill more oil and gas, ditching Paris agreement
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Reaching the 1.5°C as per the Paris agreement could be rendered impossible after this.
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Mariner oil field, located approximately 150km east of the Shetland Islands, in Block 9/11a in the northern North Sea, UK (Equinor ASA)
The United Kingdom has ordered a ramp-up in oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, defying its own net-zero commitment, neglecting alternative measures provided by experts on how to provide quicker relief from energy bills while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
On Thursday, a new energy security strategy will be revealed, and it will acknowledge the urgency to become less reliant on fossil fuels. However, it will still allow for licenses for the exploration of new oil and gas fields, which means more production in the North Sea.
British ministers are expected to say that the UK will need more oil and gas on the short term, and possibly fossil fuel imports to replace the small proportion of Russian imports of oil and gas, decreasing prices.
Read more: UK urges G7 members to ban Russian oil imports
According to a Whitehall source, Downing Street will present North Sea oil and gas as lower in carbon than imported gas to meet the UK's demands.
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a "now or never" warning on Monday, contending that new fossil fuel exploration will render the Paris agreement impossible: limiting global warming to 1.5°C will become unachievable.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the United Kingdom, though is a strong supporter of renewable energy, is under pressure from the Tories to pump more gas.
The United Kingdom has recently participated in an event: The Atlantic Council's Global Energy Forum on March 28, 2022, in Dubai.
The talks in Dubai addressed the threats of the phenomenon - or perhaps at least acknowledged that there must be a shift away from fossil fuel toward more sustainable, safer, and more green sources of power to curb the effects of the crisis that has brought upon humanity ravaging effects as temperatures keep increasing.
"We definitely at this time need to include all available resources," UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei told an energy forum in Dubai. Al-Mazrouei's words were in light of a global fuel crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia, not to mention the issues that have been facing energy supplies since the world started recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic that had the global economy as a whole sitting on the bench.
Currently, Earth is 1.1 degrees C hotter than preindustrial levels and that has caused drastic changes. Drought, floods, and storms amplified by rising sea levels have been ravaging our planet, rendering it nearly uninhabitable, and that is only the tip of the melting iceberg, for it will only become worse.
Throughout the forum, many have nearly ridiculed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom for calling for decreasing investments in fossil duel while pleading for exporting countries to pump more fuel to mitigate soaring energy prices.
