At last a little bit of good PR for a UK oil and gas industry struggling to recover from the BP Deepwater disaster.

It would appear the UK has more of the stuff than industry thought. Now this may have the environmentalists despairing, but the reality is the country will still be relying on fossil fuels for some time and the more we have of it to tide the country over until new sources of energy are an everyday reality the better.

According to Oil and Gas UK's latest survey the decline in production has slowed to 1-2% per year. Given known reserves and guesstimates about future deposits an educated guess says the UK continental shelf still has at least 35 years worth of production as a major supplier of fossil fuels..

This is reflected in investment which has soared by 40% in the North Sea over the past year.

This is good news for jobs and for the retainment of engineering expertise here, plus a bonus for treasury coffers. It is even better news for Scotland as the wells that will be running dry are those in the southern areas of the North Sea and those new areas of discovery will be to the west of the Shetland Islands along with more comprehensive extraction of existing wells in the mid and north North Sea fields.

This will help the UK energy policy deal with the first of its three main challenges, security of supply. The more we can produce here the less we have to import.

However it is vital that this supply bonus complies with the other two challenges. Reduction of emissions and affordability. Fossil fuels harm the environment it is a fact and it is vital that we continue to come with ways of using them to produce energy as cleanly as possible.

Thirdly price. With petrol now touching £7 a gallon in some places surely an increase in supply will bring down the price? Unfortunately in the grand scheme of things the UK reserves are spit in ocean  compared to those countries who have the real clout. With the Middle East on the verge of implosion don't expect to be seeing prices come down any time soon.