Brexit riles North Sea's revival

The crunch point is fast approaching for a UK oil industry that has performed better than many had foreseen in the face of continued Brexit uncertainties

Two years ago, UK-based oil companies were warning about the impact of uncertainty created by the Brexit process on efforts to prolong the life of maturing North Sea assets. They probably couldn't have imagined there would still be pretty much the same level of uncertainty by late 2018. The UK is due to formally leave the bloc at the end of March next year. But for much of the past two years it has been struggling to make much headway in negotiations with its European partners over the shape of their post-Brexit relationship. Back in mid-2016, oil firms also may not have imagined that their North Sea activities would be going quite as well as they have been. The sector had been teetering on