Can increasing North Sea oil and gas production really make much difference?
Wicks: I think it can. One truth about the North Sea is that extraction rates are now in decline and after all we have been getting oil and gas from there since the mid-1960s, the era of the first Beatles single and Harold Wilson’s government, it is a long time that we have been drawing on those reserves but there’s still a great deal there. One estimate is that there could be the equivalent of 25 billion barrels of oil there in the North Sea and with the price of oil so high it clearly creates greater financial incentives to exploit that resource so the story of the North Sea is hardly over. I think recent announcements show we have a determination to have a licensing regime there to encourage oil companies to extract as much as possible.
