Cross-sector collaboration and shut session of trade specialists will likely be key to delivering the North Sea Future Plan (NSFP).
That’s what Mark Wilson, HSE and Operations Director at trade physique Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), mentioned in a launch despatched to Rigzone lately, which highlighted that OEUK will host its 2026 HSE convention on February 25, “bringing collectively leaders from throughout sectors to form the way forward for the North Sea as a multi-purpose power basin”.
“Underneath the theme ‘Belief. Transparency. Transformation’, the convention will kick off with a pivotal session primarily based on the UK authorities’s North Sea Future Plan, which can discover how co-location between offshore wind, oil and fuel, and carbon seize and storage (CCUS) can ship a safer, cleaner basin,” OEUK mentioned in its launch.
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The UK Division for Vitality Safety and Web Zero (DESNZ) introduced the NSFP in an announcement posted on its website again in November 2025.
“We stay up for welcoming trade leaders, technical specialists, regulators, and innovators to this one-day occasion,” Wilson mentioned within the OEUK launch.
“The primary session of the day is a superb alternative to listen to how improved steering, aligned requirements, higher information sharing, and early engagement can allow offshore energies to attain protected and sustainable co-location throughout the North Sea and assist the plan’s built-in imaginative and prescient,” he added.
OEUK famous in its launch that its occasion explores the themes of belief, transparency, and transformation throughout all areas of well being, security, and surroundings, together with emissions efficiency. It added that the convention options full viewers occasions in addition to a sequence of parallel breakout classes all through the day.
In its assertion revealed in November final 12 months, DESNZ introduced the publication of a “landmark plan to guard current jobs and ship the following era of good, new jobs”.
“The federal government is charting a brand new course for the North Sea, offering a worldwide blueprint for a good, managed, and affluent transition to future proof the sector,” DESNZ mentioned within the assertion.
“The new North Sea Future Plan … units a transparent path to develop clear power industries, assist the administration of current oil and fuel fields for his or her lifespan, and assist North Sea staff and communities make the transition,” it added.
“The plan implements the authorities’s manifesto commitments to handle current fields for everything of their lifespan, and to not difficulty new licenses to discover new oil and fuel fields,” it continued.
“The federal government will introduce new Transitional Vitality Certificates which can allow restricted oil and fuel manufacturing on or close to to current fields – as long as this further manufacturing doesn’t require new exploration and is already a part of or hyperlinks again to current fields and infrastructure, and is critical for a managed, orderly, and affluent transition,” it went on to state.
Within the assertion, UK Vitality Secretary Ed Miliband mentioned, “the North Sea’s staff and communities have helped energy our nation and our world for many years”.
“That is our plan to make sure they proceed to take action for a lot of a long time to return. This is a world-leading plan with staff, unions, companies, and communities at its coronary heart, and implements in full the authorities’s manifesto commitments,” he added.
“It’s a plan which will make sure that the North Sea is an power powerhouse all through the twenty first century,” he continued.
Stuart Payne, Chief Govt of the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), mentioned in that assertion, “this plan gives readability and course for the power trade, in addition to for the North Sea Transition Authority as a corporation”.
“We are going to work along with authorities and trade to make sure that we proceed to drive ahead the transition as an enabling regulator, delivering the following chapter for the North Sea and all who depend on it,” he added.
OEUK describes itself on its web site because the main commerce affiliation for the UK offshore power trade and a not for revenue membership group with a historical past stretching again 5 a long time. The NSTA highlights on its website that it licenses, regulates, and influences the UK oil and fuel, offshore hydrogen, and carbon storage industries.
To contact the writer, electronic mail andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com
