The lawyer representing Equinor has told the Court of Session revoking the licence for Rosebank – the UK’s largest untapped oil field – would result in the loss of thousands of jobs.
The comments came on the third day of a hearing on a legal challenge raised by environmental campaigners against the government’s decision to green-light the Rosebank and Jackdaw North Sea fields.
The BBC reports Equinor, which owns Rosebank along with Ithaca Energy, said it was investing £2.2billion in the project, creating employment for 4,000 people.
Meanwhile Shell told the court revoking its Jackdaw licence would also waste huge sums of money and have a damaging impact on jobs.
John MacGregor KC, representing Equinor, told the judicial review that “certainty and predictability is critical in highly-regulated industries”.
He said: “Those making major investment decisions need to be able to ascertain the risk of proceeding.”
Court documents state production at Rosebank is set to begin in 2026/27.
Environmental campaigners insist UK government failed to properly consider the environmental impact of the eventual burning of the fossil fuels produced by the North Sea fields.
The government gave the go-ahead for Rosebank and Jackdaw in 2023 and 2022 respectively.
But the UK Supreme Court ruled in a subsequent case that these emissions – known as scope three emissions – must be considered in environmental impact assessments alongside emissions caused by the extraction of the oil and gas itself.
Now, environmental groups Greenpeace and Uplift are arguing in the Court of Session that this means work on the fields should be brought to a halt while a more comprehensive environmental impact assessment is carried out.
The case continues.