why are energy prices rising in the UK, when their main sources is its own North Sea gas?
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When gas is extracted from the earth, you need somewhere to put it or you need to use it.
The UK North Gas fields are definitely a source of gas for the country, but the gas field is insufficient to meet all of its demand and Britain must therefore import gas from other places, like Norway, to make ends meet.
Many countries without these Gas fields maintain large gas storage facilities. These facilities allow them to buy gas in the winter and use it in the summer. That way, it’s much cheaper and can shield people from the high cost over winter.
A few years ago it looked like gas was plentiful and the shift to renewables was going well. The UK decided to roll back it’s already small storage facilities and it’s now capable of storing less than 1 winter-month of Gas for the country.
This worked fine for some time, until everyone started panicking about gas capacity this year! Now everyone with storage capacity (like Germany) is filling up their tanks, investors are betting the prices will go up and driving it higher, and the UK has no storage to shield it from these large increases in price.
Even if the UK stopped selling it’s North Sea gas to other countries, the lack of storage capacity would mean the UK either needs to “use it or lose it”. In any case, it doesn’t produce enough to support its own needs anyway. Therefore, the UK is fully exposed to the global market price of natural gas.
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