Licence data from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) for petroleum prospecting, exploration, and extraction. The dataset covers Great Britain, its territorial sea, and the UK Continental Shelf, with polygons representing licences, blocks, and sub-areas. It was last updated on 2025-09-11 by the Government Digital Service.
Use Cases
- Map petroleum licence boundaries based on the described licence polygons.
- Analyze the distribution of offshore versus onshore licences based on the described categories.
- Identify operators and beneficiaries across different licence sub-areas based on the described finer divisions.
- Support economic recovery assessments based on the NSTA's described discretion in granting licences.
Strengths
- Data is structured into three distinct datasets (Licences, Licence Blocks, Sub Areas) for different levels of detail.
- Licence polygons provide a geographic representation of exclusive rights for petroleum search and extraction.
- Last updated on 2025-09-11, indicating recent maintenance.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the UK-focused eu_open_data source.
Provenance
- Source
- North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), via Government Digital Service.
- Collection Method
- Likely compiled from official licensing records.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2025-09-11 03:37:46.
- Geography
- Great Britain, its territorial sea, and the UK Continental Shelf.