NORTH SEA, U.K. — Twenty miles off the Yorkshire coast, organized into a vast L-shape in the North Sea, is the United Kingdom’s biggest offshore gas storage facility.
You can reach it only by helicopter — and not at all when the weather is bad. Its three platforms, each fixed to the seabed, stretch over hundreds of meters and are navigated via narrow walkways. Grates expose the stormy waters below.
This is Rough, managed by the energy giant Centrica, the company which owns British Gas. The rig is four decades old, already running around 15 years beyond its planned sell-by-date. What happens to it next gets to the heart of the United Kingdom’s sweeping climate ambitions.
The British government has promised to remove gas almost entirely from the British power grid by 2030, swapping in green electricity sources like wind and solar. That means assets like Rough, which have been serving the United Kingdom’s dirtier energy needs since the days of Margaret Thatcher, have started to resemble relics from a fast-disappearing age — even if its owners spy a chance at rebirth.
