Rosebank oil field approved: True energy security will only be delivered by clean renewable energy – Bob Ward

Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK Climate Change Committee have warned that the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with international efforts to limit climate change to 1.5 Celsius degrees. The go-ahead for Rosebank signals to other fossil fuel producers that the UK thinks it is fine to continue with business as usual, even while the devastating and growing consequences of our use of coal, oil and gas are becoming ever more evident through worse floods, droughts and heatwaves.

While this is a relatively big new development for the UK North Sea, given it is a mature basin with declining production, it will supply relatively small amounts of oil. Equinor, the Norwegian company that owns 80 per cent of the field, estimates that it will produce up to 70,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak. That represents just 0.07 per cent of the 93.8 million barrels of oil a day the world produced in 2022.

So Rosebank will make a trivial difference to the volumes traded on the global market, or the international price which is controlled by the big oil producers. The recent decision by Russia and Saudi Arabia to cut production to boost the price of oil has led to rises in petrol and diesel prices, and prevented the UK inflation rate from falling faster. The peak daily production for Rosebank would represent about 5 per cent of the 1.3 million barrels of oil a day that the UK consumed during 2022. So it will make little difference to our energy security.

Although the development of Rosebank will generate investment and jobs, these should be weighed against the severe and growing costs of the UK’s continued dependence on fossil fuels. We are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis that was partly triggered by the rise in the price of natural gas for electricity generation and heating following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Although energy prices have dropped from their peak last winter, they are still higher than before the war started. And bills will start to go up again if the winter ahead in Europe is long and cold. The truth is that if Scotland and the rest of the UK wants sustainable, affordable and secure energy, it needs to accelerate the growth of its clean domestic energy sources, such as onshore and offshore wind, and electrify its economy so that it is no longer exposed to the volatility of international markets for fossil fuels.

Many of the workers in the oil and gas industry in Scotland can and will be re-deployed to help build and maintain offshore wind turbines, or potentially develop the infrastructure for the storage of residual emissions of carbon dioxide in disused wells in the North Sea. Our future prosperity lies in the development of clean and cheap British energy, not in helping to maintain the world’s dependence on dirty and expensive fossil fuels.

Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science