Denmark will forbid the search for new oil and natural gas fields in the North Sea, as part of a larger project to reduce the extraction of fossil fuels and their emissions by 2050. It will therefore not approve new concessions, which allow companies to look for and produce natural gas and oil; those already issued will remain valid until 2050. It is one of the more drastic measures approved so far by a crude oil producing country: Denmark is in fact the largest oil producer in the European Union (even if it produces much less than Norway and the United Kingdom which, although geographically close, are not part of the European Union).
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The Danish Minister of the Environment, Dan Jorgensen, said: “we are putting an end to the era of fossil fuels”, “this decision will have consequences all over the world”.
In Denmark there are 55 extraction platforms and 20 natural gas and oil fields: according to the Danish Energy Agency, this year the country will have produced an average of over 100 thousand barrels of oil and natural gas per day. In 2019, the energy industry accounted for 1.1 percent of the national GDP, and according to the government, giving up it will cost the country 13 billion Danish kroner, or 1.75 billion euros. It is “a pleasant addition, but it does not represent the heart of the economy”, explained the chief economist of the Danish bank, Las Olsen, and the crisis brought by the coronavirus has also confirmed it.
In fact, in the third quarter of 2020, the Danish economy contracted by 4 percent compared to the same period of 2019: it was therefore not overwhelmed by the collapse in the cost of oil like the economies that are heavily dependent on it, for example those of Nigeria and Iraq.
Denmark is one of the countries more committed in the fight against climate change. In 1990 it had committed to reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030 and was among the first to exploit wind energy: for example, Ørsted companies, the largest producer of wind farms in Denmark, are Danish. open seas and oceans, and Vestas Wind Systems AS, which builds wind turbines. Denmark also plans to increase offshore wind energy by 2030 and has committed to achieving “climate neutrality” or “zero emissions”, ie the balance between emissions and carbon dioxide absorption, by 2050.
Other countries, such as the UK and France, have signed laws to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and the same made China setting 2060 as a deadline. The subsequent measures taken by Denmark, such as blocking the search for new fields, are however unprecedented.
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The decision to curtail and ultimately close the oil and natural gas industry puts some 4,000 jobs at risk, nearly all along the country’s west coast. Minister Jorgensen recalled that new opportunities will open, both in the wind energy sector and because oil and natural gas fields could be used to store emissions, and it will require manpower to do so.
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