United Kingdom
The UK Continental Shelf: A Mature Producer That Now Imports More Than It Exports
Key Takeaways
- •UK production of primary oils rose 2.4 percent to just over 31 million tonnes in 2025, less than a quarter of the 1999 peak of 137 million tonnes (DESNZ, DUKES 2026).
- •Refining operations ended at Grangemouth and Lindsey in 2025, and refinery output fell to 48 million tonnes, only 0.5 million tonnes above the pandemic low of 2020.
- •The UK was a net importer of oil products by 15.5 million tonnes in 2025, the highest since it became a net product importer in 2013.
- •Upstream profits face a 78 percent headline rate: 30 percent ring fence corporation tax, a 10 percent supplementary charge and the 38 percent Energy Profits Levy (NSTA).
- •The United States and Norway are the UK's two largest crude suppliers; no Russian oil has been imported since the ban of 5 December 2022.
The UK position in brief
The United Kingdom produced just over 31 million tonnes of primary oils in 2025, up 2.4 percent on 2024 but less than a quarter of the 1999 peak of 137 million tonnes. At the same time its refining base shrank: refining stopped at Grangemouth and Lindsey during 2025, refinery output fell to 48 million tonnes, and the UK imported 15.5 million tonnes more oil products than it exported, the largest gap since it became a net product importer in 2013 (DESNZ, Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2026, Chapter 3, checked October 2026).
So the UK story in 2026 has two halves that pull in opposite directions. Upstream, a mature basin is declining slowly with occasional year-on-year gains. Downstream, the country is turning from a refiner into an importer of finished fuels, especially diesel and jet fuel. And the benchmark that carries the name of one of its first giant fields, Brent, now prices crude from across the Atlantic basin rather than from British waters alone.
Reading UK oil statistics: tonnes, primary oils and products
UK official statistics come from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in two main publications: the monthly and quarterly Energy Trends and the annual Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES). Both report oil in tonnes, not barrels, and they separate two families:
- Primary oils: crude oil, natural gas liquids and feedstocks, the raw material going into refineries or out to export.
- Petroleum products: petrol, diesel, jet fuel, burning oil (kerosene for heating), fuel oil and the rest, the output of refineries or imports of finished fuel.
Keeping the two apart avoids the most common misreading of UK trade data. In 2025 the UK was a net importer of primary oils by 16 million tonnes and a net importer of products by 15.5 million tonnes. Those are separate gaps, and they have moved differently: the primary oils gap shrank by 18 percent as refineries closed and needed less crude, while the products gap widened by about a fifth because the same closures removed domestic fuel supply.
Converting to barrels needs an assumption about density. As an illustration only, using an assumed factor of 7.5 barrels per tonne, 31 million tonnes a year works out to roughly 640,000 barrels per day. The exact figure depends on the mix of crude and NGLs, which is why DESNZ publishes in tonnes. Our barrel conversion explainer sets out why density changes the answer.
Production: from 137 million tonnes to 31
Offshore production began in the 1970s and peaked in 1999. The decline since then has not been smooth:
| Period | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1970s | Offshore production begins | DUKES 2026 |
| 1999 | Peak: 137 million tonnes of primary oils | DUKES 2026 |
| 2015 to 2019 | New fields provide a temporary boost | DUKES 2026 |
| 2021 | Sharp drop during extensive planned maintenance of the Forties Pipeline System | DUKES 2026 |
| 2024 | Production falls; DUKES 2026 implies about 30 million tonnes | DUKES 2026 (derived) |
| 2025 | Just over 31 million tonnes, up 2.4 percent | DUKES 2026 |
Checked October 2026. The 2024 figure is derived from the 2025 total and the 2.4 percent growth rate, not quoted directly.
The 2021 entry is a reminder of how concentrated UK infrastructure is. DESNZ notes that the Forties Pipeline System carries a significant proportion of UK oil to onshore terminals, so planned work on one line showed up in the national annual total. Pipeline maintenance, rather than geology, explains several of the sharpest single-year moves in the series.
Who buys UK crude
UK crude does not mostly go to UK refineries. In 2025 refineries received 4.7 million tonnes of crude from the UK Continental Shelf, up 17 percent but only 9.7 percent of refinery demand. Most UK production is sold abroad: exports of primary oils fell 2.8 percent to 27 million tonnes, with nearly 90 percent going to the EU, mainly to refining hubs in the Netherlands, where it is turned into road diesel, gas oil and heating fuels that the UK then imports back.
That loop, crude out and products in, is the result of a refinery system built for a different crude slate and a different demand mix. DESNZ points to changes in shipping fuel rules since 2020, global prices, and the 2025 closures as reasons UK refiners took more imported crude, chiefly from the United States and Norway.
Imports: where the UK's crude and fuel come from
Crude
| Supplier (2025) | Volume or share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Largest source, just over 1 million tonnes ahead of Norway; under a third of crude imports | Down 26 percent on 2024 |
| Norway | 11 million tonnes, 27 percent of crude imports | Down 21 percent on 2024 |
| OPEC members combined | 21 percent of crude imports, about 8 million tonnes a year since 2023 | Rose after the Russian ban |
| Russia | Zero since 5 December 2022 | Import ban |
Total imports of primary oils fell 9.2 percent to 44 million tonnes in 2025, as two fewer refineries needed feed.
Products
Product imports rose 3.6 percent in 2025. The shape of the import bill shows which fuels the UK no longer makes enough of:
- Diesel was just under 40 percent of product imports. The United States supplied 31 percent of diesel imports, the Netherlands 26 percent and Belgium 11 percent. Before the 2022 sanctions, Russia was an important diesel source.
- Jet fuel was almost a third of product imports. Kuwait supplied 35 percent of imported jet fuel, about 3.7 million tonnes, and India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE each supplied more than 1 million tonnes.
- By country, the Netherlands supplied almost a quarter of all product imports (7.9 million tonnes), the United States 15 percent (4.9 million tonnes), and Kuwait 13 percent.
The UK still exports petrol, of which it is more than self-sufficient. In 2025 it shipped 2.7 million tonnes to the Netherlands, 1.9 million tonnes to the United States and 1.3 million tonnes to Nigeria, together almost 70 percent of petrol exports. It also sent 1.4 million tonnes of jet fuel to Ireland, 89 percent of its jet exports, even while importing jet fuel for its own airports. That pattern, surplus petrol and deficit middle distillates, is the same imbalance that drives the refinery crack spreads European refiners earn.
Demand: stable total, shifting mix
Total UK demand for petroleum products was 61 million tonnes in 2025, up 0.2 percent, the highest since the pandemic but still 9.9 percent below 2019. Transport took about three quarters of it.
| Fuel or sector (2025) | Trend | Detail from DUKES 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Transport fuels overall | Up 1.9 percent | Still 5.8 percent below 2019 |
| Diesel for road vehicles | Falling since 2017 | Peak of 25 million tonnes in 2017; down almost a fifth since |
| Jet fuel | Down 0.8 percent | First year without growth since 2021; within 2 percent of 2019 |
| Burning oil (mainly heating) | Up 3.2 percent | Demand has followed price more than temperature |
| Industry | Down 2.2 percent | Down nearly two thirds since 2000 |
Burning oil also dominates household oil use: DESNZ puts it at 88 percent of domestic-sector oil demand, even though total domestic demand fell 1.3 percent in 2025, possibly as some households install heat pumps. The heating oil line carries a small, checkable insight. DESNZ observes that household demand for burning oil has tracked prices more closely than weather: it rose 8.4, 7.1 and 3.2 percent in 2023, 2024 and 2025 as prices eased, after dropping sharply when prices spiked in 2022. Households that store heating oil in tanks behave like small stockholders, buying more when it is cheap. The same buying pattern appears in the US Northeast, covered in our heating oil prices explainer.
Stocks and the March 2026 release
The UK held 11.2 million tonnes of oil stocks at the end of 2025, down 0.5 percent, which met the International Energy Agency requirement to hold at least 90 days of net imports. Of that, 9.2 million tonnes (82 percent) was held in the UK and the rest abroad, mostly in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Crude held at refineries fell 23 percent, a direct effect of Grangemouth becoming an import terminal and Lindsey closing. DESNZ also records that the UK took part in a co-ordinated stock release in March 2026 in response to supply disruption from the US-Iran conflict. For how coordinated releases work and how large they are relative to world supply, see our SPR depletion analysis.
Natural gas: the same decline, a different import map
Gas tells the same upstream story with a different trade pattern. UK gas production fell 3.4 percent in 2025 and remains at its lowest level since 1973; output peaked in 2000, stabilised from 2015 as new fields arrived, and has fallen again since 2019. The UK has been a net importer of gas since 2004 (DESNZ, DUKES 2026, Chapter 4, checked October 2026).
| Gas supply source (2025) | Share | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Norway, by pipeline and LNG | 69 percent of total imports, about 40 percent of gross supply | Down from 76 percent of imports in 2024; Norway provided 98 percent of pipeline imports |
| United States, as LNG | 23 percent of total imports, 76 percent of LNG imports, 13 percent of gross supply | US LNG imports up 38 percent |
| Qatar, as LNG | 1.8 percent of total imports | Largest UK import source as recently as 2022; nearly 40 percent of imports at its 2011 peak |
| Algeria, as LNG | 1.8 percent of total imports | Third largest LNG source in 2025, up 56 percent |
Two details stand out. First, the interconnectors to Belgium and the Netherlands now mostly run outward: since 2022 the UK has used them to export gas to continental Europe, and exports rose 12 percent in 2025, with Belgium taking 44 percent of the total. Britain acts as a landing point for Norwegian pipeline gas and US LNG, part of which then moves on to the continent. Second, the UK bought LNG from eleven countries in 2025, which spreads cargo risk but leaves price exposure to the global LNG market, a link explained in our Henry Hub natural gas price page.
Demand was broadly flat, down 1.0 percent, and has stayed at levels last seen in 1992 for three consecutive years. Gas was 35 percent of total UK energy demand in 2025. Households took 37 percent of gas demand and power generation and other transformation 32 percent; gas burned for electricity rose 7.0 percent from a historic low in 2024, while industrial and services demand each fell by close to 8 percent.
How the UK taxes upstream oil and gas
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) summarises the regime (NSTA, taxation overview, checked October 2026):
| Tax | Rate | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Ring fence corporation tax | 30% | Set separately from onshore corporation tax |
| Supplementary charge | 10% | |
| Energy Profits Levy (EPL) | 38% | Temporary; ends by 31 March 2030 at the latest |
| Petroleum Revenue Tax | 0% | Permanently set to zero but not abolished |
| Headline rate on upstream profits | 78% | 30 + 10 + 38 |
The EPL has an early exit built in, the Energy Security Investment Mechanism. The levy ends before March 2030 if six-month average oil and gas prices both fall to or below threshold prices, which for 2026-27 are $78.65 per barrel for oil and 61 pence per therm for gas (originally $71.40 and 54 pence). The NSTA page also refers to draft legislation for a successor Oil and Gas Revenue Levy, published on 13 July 2026.
Worked example: what 78 percent means on a barrel of profit
Suppose an upstream project earns $30 of taxable profit per barrel after costs, an illustrative figure:
| Layer | Rate | Tax per barrel |
|---|---|---|
| Ring fence corporation tax | 30% | $9.00 |
| Supplementary charge | 10% | $3.00 |
| Energy Profits Levy | 38% | $11.40 |
| Total tax | 78% | $23.40 |
| Kept by the company | 22% | $6.60 |
Unlike Norway's special tax, which is calculated after the ordinary tax is deducted, the three UK rates here apply to similar profit bases and add up directly, so the headline and marginal rates coincide at 78 percent in this simplified case. Investment allowances, loss relief and decommissioning relief change the effective rate on any real project, which is why the headline should not be read as the tax on every barrel. The comparison with Norway's 78 percent is a coincidence of totals reached by different routes.
Rosebank: a consent decision that became a test case
The Rosebank field west of Shetland is the most closely watched undeveloped oil project in UK waters and the clearest example of how environmental law now shapes development. On the government's environmental permits page the project is listed as under review by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED). The page shows the developer changing from Equinor UK Limited to Adura Operations Limited on 5 February 2026, a further-information public notice that ran from 16 July to 17 August 2026, and an earlier further-information window that closed on 20 November 2025 (GOV.UK, Rosebank field development, last updated 16 July 2026, checked October 2026).
The re-run consultation followed a January 2025 ruling by the Scottish courts, as widely reported at the time, that the original consent was unlawful because it did not assess the emissions from burning the oil produced. As of the check date the government page showed no final decision. For readers, the practical point is timing: a field's sanction now depends on an environmental review that includes end-use emissions, and that review can add years between discovery and first oil.
Production outlook: what the NSTA publishes
The NSTA publishes projections of UK oil and gas production and expenditure; the February 2026 release, with its production and expenditure workbook and a comparison against DESNZ and Climate Change Committee demand pathways, was the latest listed on its data page at the check date (NSTA, production and expenditure projections, checked October 2026). The figures sit in downloadable spreadsheets rather than the page text, so this profile does not restate them. Readers comparing those projections with DUKES history should check the units in each workbook before setting one against the other, because DUKES reports tonnes.
What the UK statistics do not show
- Tonnes are not barrels. Any barrels-per-day figure for the UK depends on an assumed density. The 640,000 b/d illustration above uses 7.5 barrels per tonne and should not be quoted as an official figure.
- Primary oils include NGLs and feedstocks. "UK oil production" in DUKES is wider than crude alone.
- Refinery closures distort year-on-year trade. The 18 percent fall in net primary imports in 2025 reflects less refinery demand, not more self-sufficiency in fuels.
- Brent is not UK production. The Brent benchmark is assessed from a basket of several crude grades, Norwegian streams among them, so its level says little about UK output on its own. See our WTI versus Brent spread explainer for how the benchmark is assessed.
- Tax headlines omit reliefs. The 78 percent figure is a statutory headline; allowances change the effective rate.
Frequently asked questions
How much oil does the UK produce?
Just over 31 million tonnes of primary oils in 2025, up 2.4 percent on 2024. That is less than a quarter of the 1999 peak of 137 million tonnes.
Is the UK a net importer of oil?
Yes, on both counts. In 2025 the UK imported 16 million tonnes more primary oil than it exported, and 15.5 million tonnes more oil products than it exported. The products gap was the largest since 2013.
Which UK refineries closed in 2025?
Refining operations ended at Grangemouth, which became an import terminal, and at the Prax Lindsey refinery. DESNZ links the 4.8 percent fall in 2025 refinery output partly to those two closures.
Where does the UK get its jet fuel?
Mostly from imports. Kuwait supplied 35 percent of imported jet fuel in 2025, about 3.7 million tonnes, and India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE each supplied more than 1 million tonnes.
What is the Energy Profits Levy?
A temporary 38 percent levy on UK upstream oil and gas profits, on top of 30 percent ring fence corporation tax and a 10 percent supplementary charge. It ends by 31 March 2030, or earlier if six-month average prices fall to the 2026-27 thresholds of $78.65 per barrel and 61 pence per therm.
Why does the UK export crude oil and import fuels?
Because its remaining refineries cannot use all of its crude or make all of the fuels it needs. UK refineries took only 9.7 percent of their crude from the UK Continental Shelf in 2025, nearly 90 percent of UK primary oil exports went to the EU, mainly to Dutch refining hubs, and the UK imported diesel and jet fuel while exporting surplus petrol. Refinery closures in 2025 widened the product deficit to 15.5 million tonnes.
Where does the UK get its natural gas?
Norway supplied 69 percent of UK gas imports in 2025, about 40 percent of gross supply, mostly by pipeline. US LNG supplied 23 percent of imports. UK production fell 3.4 percent to its lowest level since 1973.
Does the UK still import Russian oil?
No. The UK has imported no oil from Russia since the ban took effect on 5 December 2022, and crude from OPEC members has filled part of the gap.
For how the UK compares with other producers, open the global oil production map.
References
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). "Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2026, Chapter 3: Oil and Oil Products" (2025 data on production, trade, refining, demand and stocks). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a69f02d16bc92f51e1a4337/DUKES_2026_Chapter_3.pdf (checked October 2026)
- North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA). "Taxation: overview" (ring fence corporation tax, supplementary charge, Energy Profits Levy, ESIM thresholds). https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/exploration-production/taxation/overview/ (checked October 2026)
- NSTA. "Production and expenditure projections" (February 2026 release). https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-and-publications/production-projections/ (checked October 2026)
- DESNZ. "Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2026, Chapter 4: Natural Gas". https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aba968e8cb3c0580e5012d0/DUKES_2026_Chapter_4.pdf (checked October 2026)
- GOV.UK / OPRED. "Rosebank field development" environmental permit page (last updated 16 July 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rosebank-field-development (checked October 2026)
