Docked in the Cromarty Firth near Inverness in north-east Scotland, Ping Petroleum’s vessel for extracting and storing up to 270,000 barrels of oil is an imposing presence in a port full of components set to power the UK economy. Some 60 metres in diameter and about 45 metres tall, the Excalibur is a floating ship deployed near platforms to receive, store and process oil before transferring it into tankers.
“If the government implements the kind of windfall taxes they are talking about, then you end up with a cliff edge in UK energy production because the industry will be taxed into uncompetitiveness,” Wheaton said. “That is going to cause a very dramatic decline in investment and therefore production and jobs, and a big hit to energy security.” The industry is already grappling with a big drop in production, which fell to 1.27mn barrels of oil equivalent per day last year from 4.