When Donald Trump declared that the people of Aberdeen were “dancing in the streets” following reports that incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham might approve new North Sea drilling, one could almost smell the crude optimism. Trump went further, claiming that reopening the North Sea would transform the United Kingdom “from a poverty stricken disaster, to one of the richest countries anywhere in the world.” It was a bold promise. It was also arithmetically impossible.

The North Sea Transition Authority, the UK’s own regulator, estimates that 47.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent have already been extracted from the UK Continental Shelf. What remains is 2.9 billion barrels of proven and probable reserves. Even stretching the definition to include contingent and prospective resources, much of them speculative and technically challenging, the total sits at roughly 15.8 billion barrels. Over ninety per cent of the recoverable oil and gas is gone. Production is projected to fall by between 85 and 91 per cent by 2050, depending on whether new fields are brought online. The Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, presented as North Sea crown jewels, would together displace roughly three per cent of current UK gas imports.

Five hundred years of supply, as Trump has claimed? Try a few decades of managed decline.

Yet the more interesting question is not whether Trump is........

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