Total production of crude oil and natural gas liquids was 461.58 million barrels last year, with net oil imports of 90.90 million barrels, while Britain's aviation fuel use fell as planes were grounded by natural hazards.
"Deliveries of aviation turbine fuel in 2010 were 3.0 percent lower than in 2009, with snow and volcanic ash factors for lower use," the government said of an ash cloud that grounded flights in April and of snowbound runways in December. Britain was a net exporter of 2.1 million tonnes of petroleum products in 2010, despite a 2.6 percent fall in refinery throughput, while demand for oil products fell 0.5 percent year on year to 71.5 million tonnes.
UK oil and gas output has declined since 1999 and the government expects it to fall more than a quarter from 2009 to 2015 unless new reserves -- which some estimates put at over 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent -- can revive production.
Producers have warned that Britain's surprise tax increase on oil and gas profits, announced on March 23, could harm investments in new fields needed to slow the decline.
Representatives from industry body Oil & Gas UK met government ministers on Thursday to discuss the impact of the higher taxes announced in last week's UK budget.
"The meeting recognised the concerns arising out of the new measures in the Budget for gas fields," Oil & Gas UK chief executive Malcolm Webb said in a statement.
"The Government wishes to engage with the industry to investigate whether the negative impacts of the tax increase can be mitigated."
ENERGY STATISTICS
Britain's natural gas production also continued to fall, down 4.3 percent to the equivalent of 664 terawatt hours (TWh) last year, while net gas imports rose 29.6 percent to 413 TWh.
Total gas demand rose 8.3 percent to 1,090 TWh, driven by a 15-percent increase in domestic consumption -- with one of the coldest starts and finishes to the year on record driving up heating demand, while Britain's power generation sector burnt 4.3 percent more gas than it did in 2009.
"Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports accounted for about a third of total imports. The bulk of these LNG imports came from Qatar," the government said.
Britain has become one of the world's biggest importers of LNG in the last year thanks to new import terminal capacity.
Britain's demand for coal rose 5.2 percent higher to 51.3 million tonnes, with consumption by electricity generators up by 5.0 per cent, but their large stockpiles saw coal imports slump 30.5 percent to 26.5 million tonnes in last year. UK coal production rose 1.6 percent to 18.2 million tonnes.
Cold weather in early and late 2010 was also largely responsible for a 3.8 percent increase in British emissions of climate-warming carbon.