‘Self-harm’: Kemi Badenoch slams Rosebank and Jackdaw ruling

Kemi Badenoch has slammed a Scottish courts ruling that green lighting the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields was unlawful.

The written judgement on the two proposed fields off Shetland was announced on Thursday, following a court battle brought by environmental campaigners Uplift and Greenpeace.

Lord Ericht ruled that a more scrupulous assessment of Rosebank and Jackdaw’s environmental impact was required.

“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,” he said.

In a statement on X, Badenoch described the verdict as an “act of self-harm” and an example of “lawfare killing economic growth.”

“The Labour government who were banging on about growth yesterday are too scared to fight for the oil and gas fields that deliver energy security and provide jobs for thousands of people,” she said.

“For the sake of our country, Keir Starmer needs to get serious. He talks a lot, but his actions so far are all hiking taxes and caving to the unions and the green lobby.”

Permission for Rosebank, a giant oil field was granted in autumn 2023, while Jackdaw, a smaller gas field, was approved by the former Conservative government and the North Sea Transition Authority in summer 2022.

Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said the ruling was “common sense.”

“The climate science is crystal clear that we can’t create new oil and gas fields if we’re going to stay within safe climate thresholds,” she said.

Rosebank contains some 300m to 500m barrels of oil and is the largest untapped oil field in British waters.

Equinor, the Norwegian state energy firm, holds an 80 per stake in the oil giant, alongside Ithaca Energy.

Shell is currently developing the Jackdaw field.