Does the UK really need to drill for more North Sea oil and gas?
The UK government is considering whether to approve a giant new oil and gasfield in the North Sea, despite warnings from energy economists and climate scientists that the world cannot afford to develop any new fossil fuel projects.
The Rosebank oilfield, which could produce up to 500m barrels of oil over its lifetime, has set ministers on a collision course with climate campaigners. Ministers insist that the government will stay within its carbon budgets while securing the UK’s energy supplies and creating jobs and investment. But there are few clean answers to the questions in this debate.
Campaigners at Uplift, which opposes new North Sea drilling, have warned that emissions produced from extracting oil and gas from the Rosebank field would exceed the targets set out for the oil and gas sector by the government’s official independent climate advisers, the Climate ChangeCommittee (CCC).
This does not necessarily mean the UK would bust its carbon budgets, which are not officially set out for each sector of the economy. But it would require deeper cuts from other areas. The CCC itself has said it is “not clear cut” whether the UK should explore for new oil.
In a letter to the business secretary last year, Lord Deben, the CCC chair, said the committee had not been able to establish the net impact on global emissions of new North Sea oil and gas projects. The UK will continue to be a net importer of fossil fuels “for the foreseeable future”, he added, meaning there could be an advantage to domestic oil and gas over imports, which often have a bigger carbon footprint.
Still, ministers should be using policies which drive down demand for fossil fuels to keep a lid on imports, and applying “stringent” tests on new domestic
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