Government facing court action over Rosebank oil field development
Campaign group Uplift says the project will impact net zero targets
The approval of the Rosebank oil field is being met with legal action for the offshore oil and gas regulator, and the UK Government.
Campaign group Uplift is claiming the Energy Secretary failed to show how the site would align with plans to be net zero by 2050.
In a separate case, Greenpeace says the approval process failed to consider how pollution from one of the largest untapped oil reserves in UK waters would affect wildlife, either by the project itself or by burning the oil once produced.
The government said it “strongly rejects these claims” and will contest any challenge.
Executive director of Uplift and herself a climate lawyer, Tessa Khan, said: “If Rosebank goes ahead, the UK will blow its own plans to stay within safe climate limits. It's that simple.
"If the Government disagrees, it needs to provide evidence and prove it in court. The regulator also needs to be open about its reasons for approving a huge oil field when we're facing a worsening climate crisis."
The organisation claims the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which is responsible for reviewing applications to develop oil and gas in the North Sea and North Atlantic, had given no reasons why it approved of the development, nor how it would help with Net Zero.
Net zero, as defined by the Government, only includes the emissions generated by the machinery used to extract the oil, not those from when it is burnt after being sold.
The general argument is that if another country buys and burns oil from UK waters, those emissions should count as belonging to that country, as the UK would count emissions from imported diesel burnt in cars on British roads as its own.
The NSTA said it does not comment on ongoing legal issues.
Greenpeace argues the Energy Secretary should have considered the “direct and indirect effects of the use of the extracted hydrocarbons on human health, the environment and climate change", but that this was "deliberately" excluded from an environmental impact assessment.
It also said there is no evidence that Scottish ministers were consulted about Rosebank's impact on an important seabird breeding site nearby and that drilling and laying subsea cables will destroy ocean habitats while oil contamination will affect whales.
A Government spokesperson said: "The UK is a world leader in reaching net zero - cutting emissions faster than any other major economy - and as the independent Climate Change Committee recognises, we will still need oil and gas as part of our energy mix.
"We will continue to back the UK's oil and gas industry, which underpins our energy security, supports up to 200,000 jobs, and will provide around £50 billion in tax revenue over the next 5 years - helping fund our transition to net zero."
The primary owner of Rosebank, Equinor, claims the field contains about 300 million barrels of oil, and is set to benefit from a £2.8m tax break to extract it, as calculated by environmental campaigners.
Globally, all current and planned fossil fuel projects would heat the Earth way beyond the internationally-agreed limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
At the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai, world leaders agreed there was a need to stop burning fossil fuels as a means to stop climate change, however there is not agreement on who should be first to pull their investments.
The International Energy Agency’s analysis shows that there is double what is needed this decade.