The UK government has approved the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea. I’ll have a lot to say on this but for a start while it blows any remaining pretence that UK is committed to net zero, the UK government will be massively subsidising a foreign company to extract and take the oil abroad …
… [N]ew estimates by the campaign group Uplift show that Rosebank, expected to cost £4.1bn to develop, could receive an effective taxpayer subsidy worth £3.75bn through tax breaks and the loophole in the government’s windfall tax that spares oil and gas investment.
This would mean that Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned company behind the potential field, would pay only £350m to develop Rosebank, which is three times the size of the Cambo oilfield. Equinor made £62bn last year, and about 80% of the oil from Rosebank is likely to be exported, rather than bolstering the UK’s energy security.
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