Miliband urged to back Shetland gas fields that could fuel UK for five years

Britain should move to tap five years’ worth of gas reserves lying near the Shetland Islands, a North Sea energy company has said.Serica Energy says an estimated five trillion cubic feet of gas lies under the seabed west of Shetland, where there is already infrastructure for piping it back to the mainland.The claim will pile fresh pressure on Ed Miliband to allow drilling in the North Sea. The Energy Secretary has faced mounting calls to rethink his position on oil and gas amid growing warnings of looming gas shortages linked to the Iran war.Chris Cox, Serica’s chief executive, said: “Of course [five trillion cubic feet of gas], that sounds like a big number, and it is.“In fact, it’s equivalent to supplying every household in the UK for five years. And yet, some people continue to say that the amount of gas we can produce in the UK is not significant.”Serica, which published its 2025 results on Thursday, said its data showed there were many other potential new gas fields in the area.It follows Wednesday’s Commons clash between Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer over Labour’s blocking of two new North Sea oil and gas fields.Mr Miliband has so far resisted granting approval for plans to exploit the Rosebank field west of Shetland, and Jackdaw in the North Sea. Both are in the final stages of development and could be pouring gas into UK pipes within months.The fields cited by Serica lie in the same area west of Shetland as Rosebank, some with licences and some without. The latter would fall foul of Mr Miliband’s ban on new exploration and licencing.Mr Cox said the gas deposits west of Shetland were potentially huge.“We are very excited by the overall potential,” he said.Serica has acquired some of the rights while others are held by rival companies such as Adura and Ithaca, whom Mr Cox described as equally “bullish” about the drilling prospects in the area.Their key advantage is that they lie close enough to existing platforms and pipelines to be developed quickly, meaning they could be in operation within a couple of years. Fuel shortages and price rises caused by the Iran conflict are now predicted to last at least that long.David Latin, Serica’s chairman, said the Iran conflict showed the need for a rethink by Labour. He called on Mr Miliband to accelerate approvals for licenced fields, lift the ban on new licences and scrap the windfall tax.He said: “There is significant untapped oil and gas potential on the UK continental shelf … maximising the benefits available to the UK from domestic oil and gas, and achieving net zero by 2050 are not mutually exclusive objectives.“Indeed, they complement each other, not least when oil and gas imported over thousands of miles typically comes with significantly higher emissions than the equivalent domestic production.”Mr Cox warned that the Labour government’s decision to extend the windfall tax by two years to 2030 had hit it hard – leaving the company with an effective overall tax rate of 165pc.The extension of the windfall tax forced Serica to set aside $130m (£97m), and turned a $80m pre-tax profit into a post tax loss of $52m.Serica was founded in 2004 and aimed at buying up older fields from larger companies. Is now one of the top 10 UK producing oil and gas companies.Last year its 11 fields produced the equivalent of 118m barrels of oil – half of which was gas that fed into UK pipes.