Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the UK has 500 years of oil reserves left in the North Sea, and blamed the country’s high energy prices on the government’s unwillingness to drill. However, the unfortunate fact is that the North Sea oil and gas sector has been in a significant and prolonged decline due to the basin's aging oil fields, with production falling sharply since its peak in the early 2000s. According to the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the UK's energy regulator, the North Sea had ~2.9 billion barrels…