LONDON: A Scottish court on Thursday ruled against the development of two oil and gas fields in the North Sea in a “historic win” for two environmental groups.
Scotland’s Court of Session agreed with campaign groups Uplift and Greenpeace and ruled that the previous UK government’s approvals for the multi-billion-pound Rosebank and Jackdaw fields were unlawful as they did not consider the carbon emissions the projects would indirectly generate.
Judge Andrew Stewart, who presided over the judicial review, said he had considered all the circumstances and concluded in favour of granting “reduction”, a legal term for revoking approval.
“The public interest in authorities acting lawfully and the private interest of members of the public in climate change outweigh the private interest of the developers,” Stewart said.
British energy major Shell, which owns the Jackdaw gas condensate field 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of the Scottish city of Aberdeen, and Norway’s Equinor, the majority owner of Rosebank oil field 145 kilometres off the Shetland Islands, will now have to resubmit their environmental impact assessments.
The decision follows a ruling by the UK Supreme Court in June that greenhouse gas emissions indirectly generated by a business — known as Scope 3 or downstream emissions — must be taken into account.
As a result the government, which has a binding commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the UK by 2050, will be obliged when it reassesses the project to consider the emissions generated by burning extracted oil and gas, not just those that come from the extraction process.
The government said Thursday that “we will respond to this consultation as soon as possible and developers will be able to apply for consents under this revised regime.
“Our priority is to deliver a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations,” it added in a statement.
The oil fields were approved by the previous Conservative government, but the Labour government that came into power in July said it would not contest the Scottish court case in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
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