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The legal climate for UK oil and gas
24 July 2025, 6:00 pm–8:30 pm
The legal climate for UK oil and gas
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Maddy Breen
Location
-
Cornerstone Barristers2-3 Gray's Inn SquareLondonWC1R 5JH
The UK Government is developing a new vision for the North Sea region, to be accompanied by major regulatory reforms and public investments.
The Government’s aims include ending new oil and gas licences, cutting upstream emissions, scaling up clean energy industries, oil-and-gas decommissioning, and ensuring a just transition for affected workers and communities.
Oil and gas producers looking to develop already-licenced fields, meanwhile, will need to comply with the Government’s tough new guidelines for assessing the climate impact of their products’ downstream combustion emissions.
The latter guidance has been driven and shaped by landmark court decisions concerning the requirements of environmental impact assessments, and associated administrative decisions, in fossil fuel extraction cases.
Join our expert panel to discuss these developments and explore their implications for oil and gas producers, for workers, and for the communities of the North Sea region.
This event is hosted by University College London (the UCL Department of Political Science, UCL Policy Lab, and UCL Centre for Law & Environment), Cornerstone Barristers, and the London Law & Political Economy Network, and supported by a UCL Grand Challenges—Climate Crisis Small Grant.
About the Speakers
Estelle Dehon KC
at Cornerstone Barristers
Estelle Dehon KC is a leading public law barrister, specialising in environment and planning law, with particular expertise in climate change, net zero and energy infrastructure. Estelle appeared before the Supreme Court in the landmark Finch case, which established that downstream greenhouse gas emissions must be assessed in administrative decisions about whether to approve new oil and gas projects. She also appeared in the High Court in a challenge to the controversial new coal mine in Cumbria, which further developed the law relating to the environmental assessment of fossil fuel extraction projects.
Clare Rothwell-Hemsted
Principal Legal Adviser at Uplift
Clare Rothwell-Hemsted is Principal Legal Adviser at Uplift, an NGO that supports efforts to create a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas production in the UK. Clare is a lawyer with over ten years’ experience in legal research, advocacy and strategic litigation in the UK and internationally. She has been responsible for Uplift’s legal strategy, including the successful challenge to the approval of the Rosebank oil field, and led the drafting of Uplift’s detailed submissions into the UK Government’s two major consultations on oil and gas production over the past year.
Sophie Marjanac
Director of Legal Strategy at Polluter Pays Project
Sophie Marjanac is the Director of Legal Strategy at the Polluter Pays Project, an NGO that aims to ensure that the oil and gas industry—not the public—pays to clean up its mess. Sophie is an environmental and climate change lawyer with diverse experience in the non-profit sector and commercial private practice. She was at ClientEarth from 2015–2024, where she incubated the organisation’s work on climate litigation and led its initiatives to hold corporations to account for their environmental impacts.
Dr Fergus Green
Associate Professor at UCL
Dr Fergus Green is an Associate Professor in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy, and theme-lead for the UCL Policy Lab’s ‘ensuring sustainable development’ theme. He is also a member of the UCL Centre for Law & Environment, and Co-Convenor of the London Law & Political Economy Network. Fergus has published extensively on the climate-related governance of fossil fuel production. He was a contributing author to three editions of the UN Environment Programme’s fossil fuel Production Gap Report (2019–2021) and has supported NGOs in multiple jurisdictions in litigation against fossil fuel companies and projects.