Wednesday under the government's North Sea Strategy. Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce the publication of the strategy in the Budget, the BBC understands. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will issue a document on it shortly after.

The strategy is expected to contain a more liberal interpretation of a manifesto pledge to ban new oil and gas exploration using more generous extensions of existing fields. This idea for allowing new drilling in a way that can be "tied back" to existing fields was first floated at the Labour conference in September. The results of the North Sea review will not directly reference the decision being considered by ministers over whether to give the go ahead to the controversial Rosebank field, which Ed Miliband was vocally opposed to while in opposition. That project is the subject of a separate and ongoing regulatory and judicial process. However, the wider relaxation in rules is widely thought to increase the chances Rosebank will ultimately be approved. Tiebacks have historically been used for small remote extensions to existing oil and gas fields which geologically stray into currently unlicenced areas of seabed. Rosebank is a much larger facility which requires its own production infrastructure. (BBC)