The UK attracted 27 inbound energy projects last year. The year before it attracted 55.
That figure comes from EY’s attractiveness survey, and by the survey’s own reckoning it is the lowest UK count since 2013, when the total was 14. France took 50 projects over the same period, Germany 16 and Spain 12.
A halving in one year is the sort of number that invites an immediate explanation, and most of the available explanations are partly right. It is worth separating what the data actually shows from what it is being used to argue.
Oil and Gas Fell 81% to Three Projects
The collapse is not evenly spread. Oil and gas went from 16 projects to three, an 81% fall in twelve months.
Three projects across an entire country in a year is close to a standing start. It still represented 15.8% of the European total, which says as much about the state of the sector across the continent as about the UK specifically, but the direction is unambiguous.
Utility supply fell too, though less violently: 39 projects down to 24, a 39% decline. Between them these two categories account for most of the drop from 55 to 27.
That distribution matters for diagnosis. If inbound energy investment had fallen evenly across every category, the explanation would be something broad, such as the cost of capital or general country risk. A fall concentrated in hydrocarbons and utilities points at sector-specific conditions: the fiscal and regulatory regime for extraction, and the returns available in regulated supply.
Three Projects Is a Sixth of Europe
One line in the data deserves more attention than it usually gets. The UK’s three oil and gas projects represented 15.8% of the European total.
Work that backwards and the whole of Europe attracted around nineteen inbound oil and gas projects in the year. Not nineteen in the UK, or nineteen in the North Sea: nineteen across the continent.
That reframes the British number entirely. A fall from 16 to three looks like a national failure when read alone, and looks like participation in a continental withdrawal when read against a total of nineteen. Both readings can be defended, but only one of them is available to a government.
It also explains why the UK’s share held up while its count collapsed. Losing thirteen projects and still taking nearly a sixth of the European market is only possible if everyone else lost projects at a similar rate, which is what the figures imply.
For anyone whose business depends on new hydrocarbon developments, the implication is uncomfortable in a different way than the headline suggests. Relocating to a friendlier European jurisdiction does not solve the problem, because the pipeline is thin everywhere on the continent. Nineteen projects will not sustain the supply chains built for a market several times that size, whichever country they sit in.
The counterpoint is that capital does not vanish; it moves. Energy investment that is not going into European extraction is going somewhere, whether that is other regions, other parts of the energy system, or entirely different sectors. A project count for one industry in one continent measures where the money left, not where it went, and the second question is the one that determines what happens next.
France Fell Too and Still Won
The comparison with France is the part most likely to be quoted, and it needs a caveat attached.
France’s 50 projects represent a fall of nearly a third, from 74. It did not overtake the UK by growing; it declined more slowly. The whole European market for energy FDI contracted, and the UK contracted faster within it.
That distinction changes the policy question. If Britain alone were losing projects while its neighbours gained, the cause would be domestic and probably recent. What the data actually shows is a continent-wide retreat in which the UK lost relative position, which is a subtler problem and a harder one to fix with any single announcement.
It also means the ranking is doing less work than it appears to. Second place in a shrinking field is not the same achievement as second place in a growing one, and neither number tells you the capital value of the projects behind it.
Scotland Took More Than Half
Fifteen of the UK’s 27 projects went to Scotland, 55% of the national total and more than Spain managed as a country.
That concentration is not a surprise given where the infrastructure, the ports and the skills are, but it is a striking share of a national figure to sit in one nation. It also means the rest of the UK attracted twelve energy projects between them.
For anyone in an English or Welsh supply chain, that is the number to sit with rather than the headline 27. The national statistic describes an investment landscape that most of the country is not actually part of.
The corollary is that Scotland’s position is exposed to the same forces. A region holding 55% of a falling total is more concentrated, not more secure, and its next annual number depends on decisions made in a small number of boardrooms.
Investors Named the Cost of Doing Business
The survey also asked investors what worried them, and the ranking is instructive.
Macroeconomic conditions came first at 41%, geopolitical tension second at 33%, and the cost of doing business, including energy, third at 29%. Asked what the UK should do, 22% said concentrate on reducing energy prices to maintain competitiveness and 20% suggested reducing or simplifying taxation.
Notice what those top two answers are: things no UK government controls. An investor citing macroeconomic conditions and geopolitics is describing a global risk appetite, and every country in the survey faces the same one. Only the third answer is domestic policy.
It is also the answer that recurs everywhere in the current data. British industrial power prices are high enough that in some sectors electricity costs more than the producer’s entire value added, which is a difficult starting point for attracting the kind of energy-intensive investment that builds a supply chain.
There is a circularity in it that is worth naming. Energy investment is discouraged partly by energy costs, and energy costs are reduced partly by energy investment. A country can be caught on the wrong side of that loop for a long time before anything visible changes.
What a Project Count Does Not Measure
Before treating 27 as a verdict, it is worth being clear about what the number is.
It counts projects, not pounds. One large offshore wind development and one small servicing facility each count as one. A year containing three enormous commitments and a year containing thirty modest ones can produce project counts that point in exactly the opposite direction from the capital involved.
It is also a count of announcements in a period, and energy projects have long lead times. A decision taken two years ago lands in this year’s data, so the number is partly a photograph of an older investment climate rather than the current one.
None of this makes the fall meaningless. A drop from 55 to 27, with oil and gas down 81%, is too large to be an artefact of how projects are counted, and it is consistent with the rest of the picture. But it is a directional signal rather than a measurement of value, and it deserves to be quoted as one.
This is a general hazard with the current run of UK data, where almost every dataset splits the economy the same way and a single headline figure conceals two opposite movements underneath it.
What It Means for a Business Here
For firms in the energy supply chain the practical read is about sequencing rather than sentiment.
Twenty-seven projects, concentrated in Scotland and skewed away from hydrocarbons, describes a pipeline that is smaller and narrower than the one most supply-chain businesses planned around. That argues for assuming fewer tenders, longer gaps between them, and more competition on each.
It is a better basis for planning than either of the two narratives the number will be used for. It is not evidence that Britain has stopped attracting energy investment, because 27 projects and second place in Europe is not nothing. Nor is it evidence that the position is fine, because the trend is steep and the concentration is high.
The honest summary is narrower and more useful than either. Inbound energy investment fell sharply in a market that fell everywhere; the UK lost relative ground within it; the loss is concentrated in hydrocarbons and utilities; and the one lever investors named that a government actually holds is the price of energy itself. Everything else in the survey is a description of the weather.
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