‘Gas crisis’ brings UKCS supply into focus

The UK’s vulnerability to high international prices may offer an opportunity to remake the argument for domestic production

The UK government is scrambling to respond to a series of energy supplier bankruptcies and industrial shutdowns that threaten to worsen an ongoing supply chain crunch on the back of spiralling wholesale gas prices. But if every crisis is an opportunity, it may offer an apposite juncture for the UK upstream industry to press home the advantages of domestically produced hydrocarbons while the country still requires them. David Duguid, until a recent reshuffle a junior minister in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, grasped this point when the country’s energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng was moved to make a statement to the lower house on the UK gas market. “I am very passionately commit