Rosebank oil field: pragmatism over future prospects?

"Drill, baby, drill." That was the message sent by the UK government regulator last week, when it approved the development of Britain's largest untapped oil field in the North Sea, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. 

The Rosebank field, which lies 80 miles northwest of Shetland, will be developed by Norway's state-owned energy giant Equinor and its British partner Ithaca Energy. Drilling will start by 2026-27, with a view to recovering "300 million barrels of the black stuff" by 2050, while supporting 450 UK jobs. 

The decision to approve it was welcomed by No.10, and is a pragmatic one: the UK will need fossil fuels as it transitions to cleaner energy, and though the oil will be sold on international markets and the vast majority of it is likely to be exported, most European oil these days does at least stay in Europe. But that won't silence the green lobby, whose members have protested that it's "morally obscene" to open new oil fields when we should be drastically cutting emissions.

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'Fossil fuels have to come from somewhere'

The critics are wrong, said Liam Halligan in the Daily Mail. Yes, we "have to take climate change seriously"; but any move that limits our reliance on imported energy from Russia and Opec countries is welcome. And like it or not, oil and gas account for 70% of the UK's energy needs, including transport, and will still generate "around a quarter" of all the energy we use in 2050, when we're due to hit net zero.

Given that fossil fuels are going to have to come from somewhere, it's sensible of the Government to allow the development of Rosebank, which will lead to an estimated £8.1bn of direct investment.

'What sort of example does it set?'

On the contrary, it is disgraceful that No. 10 should have backed this project, said The Guardian. Only the day before the announcement, the International Energy Agency had warned that we must stop drilling for fossil fuels if we're to hit the 2015 Paris climate targets; yet the UK is offering Equinor "tax incentives" to carry on.

What sort of example does that set? If developed countries won't make sacrifices to tackle climate change, we can hardly expect poorer ones to play their part.