High Costs, Taxes Hitting UK Oil, Gas Developments – Execs

High costs and taxes could prevent development of some of the U.K.’s remaining oil and gas resources, even in areas where significant new discoveries are still being made, senior oil industry executives said Tuesday.

“We are heading in a direction that will see sub-optimal development of gas our country desperately needs,” said Frank Chapman, Chief Executive of U.K.-based BG Group PLC (BRG) at an industry conference in Aberdeen, Scotland.


“We need to gear the fiscal regime around exploration,” he said. If current high tax levels in the U.K. persist, remaining oil and gas resources which are often difficult to exploit are not going to get drilled because the high capital investment may not be recovered, he said.

Dow Jones Newswires