This week the UK government announced that it was giving the go ahead to drilling for oil and gas in the Rosebank field. Rosebank is in the far north of Scotland, near Shetland, it’s the UK’s largest untapped oil reserve, and is expected to yield 500 million barrels of oil.
Should it have been approved?
Caroline Lucas, a UK Green Party MP, was on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and she made the case against:
There is a climate emergency, in a time of record high temperatures, wildfires, melting ice sheets, bio-diversity collapse. This is the last thing we should do and locks us into the oil economy. Caroline accepted that the UK couldn’t turn off all the oil taps immediately, but used an IEA report to argue that no new exploration would is needed if we are going to hit 2050 for Net Zero. She challenged the presenter to hold anyone who said that this was about Energy Security, saying that most of the oil would be exported. This was challenged by Gilad Myerson, from Ithaca who are one of the developers along with the Norwegian company Equinor. Given that the oil would be sold at world market prices, this will not reduce bills for UK consumers. There was also a £3bn tax break for the developers because of investment allowances.
The counter argument from Gilad covered lower emissions per barrel in the UK than elsewhere, the UK being a net importer, 1600 jobs that would be created, and increased tax revenue.
This decision hinges on whether UK Energy Security or Climate Change is more important. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine energy security has been the clear winner in any argument. The UK population seem happy to accept a slower and cheaper path to Net Zero, they will not accept queues at pumps.
The real failure here is that of failing to make the case for Net Zero to the UK population. The issue is not here and now, and anyway it is for governments and the UN to sort out.
