Europe's energy crisis has political roots as much as geological ones. Groningen, the Netherlands' giant gas field, could be restarted. Induced seismicity damaged buildings in the province, forcing closure - a genuine local problem that nonetheless removed a strategically important asset at the worst possible moment, a Decouple analysis argues.
The Norwegian portion of the North Sea still produces more than three times as much oil as the British side, and while Norway holds a larger share of the basin's reserves, the gap in output reflects policy as much as geology, "Hvylya" reports. Norway offers tax incentives for new development and drilled 33 exploration wells in 2025. The United Kingdom spudded none. A 78 percent marginal tax rate on exploration and production in Britain, combined with a legal prohibition on hydraulic fracturing, does not describe a country that has concluded its geology is inadequate - it describes a country that has politically foreclosed on its options.
Shale-bearing geology exists in Poland, northern England, France, and Germany. The Decouple analysis points to a circular logic: if exploration is prohibited, companies do not invest to assess and prove reserves, and when reserves remain unproven, policymakers point to the low reserve figures as evidence that the resource is not there. The prohibition creates the condition it claims to be responding to.
The analysis compares Europe's situation to California, which has roughly as much oil and gas geology as Texas but produces a fraction of what Texas does because the legal, fiscal, and regulatory environment makes development effectively impossible. The same dynamic operates across the continent.
Europe has real options it refuses to exercise, the analysis concludes, and the human capital and industrial ecosystem to deploy them quickly has been allowed to thin. A European shale revolution faces a 20-year American head start in drilling technology, a near-complete absence of the service industry infrastructure that makes rapid field development possible, and a social environment that has been actively hostile to hydraulic fracturing.
In 2022, Europe managed its energy crisis through emergency imports and demand destruction, then returned to the same policy framework once the immediate pressure eased. The current crisis will determine whether that pattern repeats.
Also read how "Hvylya" covered what Ukraine's fight foreshadows for dozens of other states now facing similar strategic choices.