Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
In February this year, the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) wrote a letter to government in which it claimed that more domestic oil and gas extraction would have “at most, a marginal effect on prices”, recommending instead that the best way of reducing exposure to volatile energy markets is “cut[ting] fossil fuel consumption, improving energy efficiency, [and] shifting to a renewables-based power system”.
Meanwhile, research from campaign group Uplift reveals that gas from undeveloped UK oil and gas fields in the North Sea, including Rosebank, will deliver at most three weeks of energy to the UK per year, while oil would provide up to five years of oil demand, even if none of it were exported. In reality, most production from North Sea fields, along with Rosebank, which is joint-owned by Norwegian state oil major Equinor (40%), Canadian Suncor Energy (20%) and Israeli-owned Ithaca Energy (20%), is likely to be exported abroad, as is currently the case with 60% and 80% of North Sea gas and oil, respectively.
Further analysis of data from GlobalData reveals just how far burning oil and gas from Rosebank would threaten the UK’s climate targets. According to GlobalData, Rosebank contains the largest untapped oil and gas reserves of all proposed North Sea fields, with 370 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Using US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conversion figures – according to which one barrel of oil emits 0.43 tonnes (t) of CO₂ when burnt and 1,000 cubic feet of gas emit 0.0551t of CO₂ when burnt – Rosebank is likely to release 155 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (mtCO₂) into the atmosphere over its lifetime.
However, in a “balanced” net-zero pathway, as per the CCC’s sixth carbon budget, emissions from fossil fuels fall 75% by 2035 from 2018 levels. In total, emissions from “fuel supply” – predominantly made up of fossil fuels – amount to 298mtCO₂-equivalent (mtCO₂e) between 2023 and 2050, meaning lifetime emissions from Rosebank are equivalent to more than half of the UK’s remaining carbon budget for total fuel supply.
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Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
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.
Influential right-wing groups are set to host events featuring major polluters, days after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak watered down green targets.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
A number of oil and gas firms have been announced as the hosts of stands and events at this year’s Conservative Party conference.
The conference, which is being held from 1 to 4 October in Manchester, will play host to the likes of BP, British Gas’ parent company Centrica, petrochemical giant Valero, and Drax – the UK’s largest CO2 emitter.
Events hosted by the companies will cover a range of energy and climate issues, and will feature senior Conservative MPs and ministers.
A range of influential right-wing organisations will co-host the panels. They include the Spectator magazine and groups based in and around Westminster’s Tufton Street, home to a network of opaquely funded, free market think tanks with a history of criticising climate action and pushing for more fossil fuel exploration.
This news comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced several delays to the government’s net zero policies. Sunak announced on Wednesday that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles will be pushed back from 2030 to 2035, while he also watered down schemes to phase out gas boilers and scrapped new energy efficiency regulations on rented homes.
Dozens of organisations will be running stalls at the Tory conference, including a number of fossil fuel firms and major polluters. These include oil giant BP, petrochemical manufacturer INEOS, and Drax, which operates the UK’s single most polluting power station and has actively attempted to influence government energy policy in its favour.
A “Hydrogen Zone” stand which “showcases what the hydrogen economy could deliver for the UK by 2030” will also exhibit projects from a number of gas extraction and distribution companies including RWE, Centrica, Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, National Gas, SGN, and Wales and West Utilities.
DeSmog has previously revealed that the Conservative Party received £3.5 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers in 2022, while two-thirds of the directors in charge of the party’s multi-million-pound endowment fund have a financial interest in oil, gas, and highly polluting industries.
The CPS
The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), a Tufton Street think tank, is hosting two separate events at the conference in partnership with gas companies.
Valero, the US-based downstream petroleum company which operates an oil refinery in Pembroke, Wales, is hosting an event with the CPS entitled “How do we decarbonise and remain competitive?” featuring Conservative MPs Gareth Davies and John Penrose.
French gas giant EDF and German-owned energy firm E.ON will also be co-hosting a CPS event asking how energy can be made cheaper. The panel will include Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Gareth Davies.
The CPS has supported the expansion of fossil fuel exploration. In response to the release of the government’s new “energy security” strategy in April 2022, the think tank included ending the ban on fracking for shale gas in a list of “significant missed opportunities” by the government, along with onshore wind and home insulation.
This followed years of lobbying from the CPS on the subject, including a report in December 2013 entitled, “Why every serious environmentalist should favour fracking”.
In an economic bulletin issued by the CPS in March 2022, the think tank also stated that “we need to continue to support offshore exploration and production activity in the North Sea. As part of this, the government should look at accelerating regulatory approval for upcoming oil and gas projects such as Rosebank… Clair South, Glengorm, Cambo and Bentley”.
The International Energy Agency has stated that new oil and gas exploration is incompatible with net zero.
A DeSmog investigation published earlier this year revealed that three CPS board members have donated £610,000 to the Conservative Party since Rishi Sunak became prime minister.
CPS runs the online publication CapX, which has published a number of articles recently attacking net zero policies. One set of “positive” policy prescriptions featured in a piece by Andrew Hunt included pushes, in place of the “obsession” over net zero, to “force developers to build more beautiful buildings” and “replace ugly road bollards and railings with ‘green street furniture’”.
Vocal climate crisis denier Ross Clark also argued on CapX in February that net zero carries a “perverse incentive to destroy UK jobs”, and that Britain was “highly unlikely” to “get anywhere net zero by 2050”. In another CapX piece, Clark said it would be “impossible” for Britain to electrify its power grid by 2030.
The CPS told DeSmog that, in recent years, it has been “one of the most prominent champions of free-market environmentalism, with a dedicated workstream on net zero.
“Our director, Robert Colvile, has been one of the country’s most prominent advocates of onshore wind and solar, as well as co-authoring the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, which contained a prominent commitment to net zero.
“Our CapX site offers a platform for robust debate on the policy issues of the day. The most cursory glance at our output would show that this includes publishing many pieces that are strongly supportive of net zero”.
A Spectator Sport
The Spectator magazine will be hosting a Conservative conference event in association with Cadent Gas, discussing public consent for net zero. The event will feature two outspoken climate crisis deniers: Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg who is also a GB News host, and Sherelle Jacobs, a columnist at the Telegraph.
Rees-Mogg is well-known for his anti-net zero views, and was a leading proponent of further fossil fuel extraction during Liz Truss’s short tenure as prime minister.
In August, Rees-Mogg argued that the government should “revisit its approach to net zero” and “cancel the ban” on oil-fired boilers from 2026, points which Sunak mirrored in his recent net zero announcement.
Jacobs has previously argued that climate science is “being manipulated into alarmist fake news,” and more recently claimed that net zero was a “damp squib”.
An Spectator editorial published in reaction to Sunak’s climbdown on net zero measures claimed that the plan to phase-out the sale of new fossil-powered engines was a “always was a conspiracy against the public, justified on very thin environmental arguments,” and that Sunak’s announcement was “an important step”.
The editorial argued for further climate inaction on the basis that Britain contributes less than 1 percent of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. (This argument has been identified as a common example of the key climate delay tactic of “Whataboutism”, in an influential academic paper published by Cambridge University Press).
The Spectator is also hosting a drinks reception with newly formed UK gas infrastructure operator National Gas.
National Gas is also set to host an event at the Conservative conference on the UK’s “need” for hydrogen entitled “Gassed up”. The event is being co-hosted with the influential centre-right think tank Onward. Several of Onward’s former staff members are now working in Sunak’s government.
German fossil fuel giant RWE, which owns and operates Europe’s second most polluting power plant, will also host an event in association with the Conservative Environment Network (CEN). The event will ask whether wind and solar energy are “energy saviours or a blight on our communities?”. The event will feature Lee Rowley, a minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
RWE also claims to be the world’s second largest offshore wind company and Europe’s third-largest renewable energy company.
Centrica is co-hosting an event with the CEN asking whether Britain is “winning or losing” at the “green industrial revolution”.
Liquefied Natural Gas supplier Liquid Gas will also host an event on decarbonising rural areas.
The Spectator, the CEN, Onward and the Conservative Party have been approached for comment.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Fossil Free London set off flares and dropped a 15-metre banner Image: Fossil Free London
ENVIORNMENTAL activists have demanded MPs block a “reckless and absurd” climate time-bomb.
MPs returning to Parliament today were welcomed by Fossil Free London, who set off flares and dropped a 15-metre banner from the nearby bridge demanding development of the Rosebank oil field be dropped.
The decision to develop the field has been repeatedly delayed but, if granted, the licence could see oil giant Equinor benefit to the tune of £3.7 billion in tax breaks as the Tory tax giveaway to big oil — costing £10.6bn so far — continues apace.
Fossil Free London’s Joanna Warrington said: “Rishi Sunak wants to give billions of pounds of public money to a giant oil company in exchange for the climate time-bomb, which will do absolutely nothing to lower our energy bills.
In a conversation with the Daily Record, Scotland’s first minister said: “My starting position on Rosebank is I’m not convinced it should go ahead and I’ve said as much publicly, for a number of reasons.
“First and foremost, for example, the majority of Rosebank is oil as opposed to gas – that oil, of course, then gets exported.
“Any suggestion that helps us in terms of our domestic energy security, I think, doesn’t quite stack up.”
Humza Yousaf added: “Unlimited oil and gas extraction is not Scotland’s future,” when asked about the controversial Rosebank oil field.
Fossil Free London climate protestors protest Barclays sponsorship of the arts at Saddlers Wells.
A ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet at Sadlers Wells faced significant disruption on Thursday evening after climate activists stormed the stage to protest the theatre’s Barclays sponsorship.
Five member of the campaign organisation Fossil Free London hijacked the stage after the interval holding a banner that read “Drop Barclays Sponsorship”, whilst two others held placards and chanted “oily money out” from the wings.
Sadlers Wells includes Barclays bank as one of its sponsors. Barclays has continued to fund new oil and gas projects, investing over $190 billion in fossil fuels since 2016.
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BREAKING: We’ve just disrupted a performance of Romeo and Juliet at Sadler’s Wells theatre, telling them to drop @Barclays dirty oil sponsorship! It’s time to get #OilyMoneyOut of our arts, our city and our futures 🚫 pic.twitter.com/NU9hQjUpou
Barclays also invests in the oil company Equinor who are pushing forward controversial plans for the Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea. They are currently waiting on the approval of their environmental report by the government, due in October.
