A group of 40 European Union lawmakers have called on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to scrap plans to develop the Rosebank oil and gas field ahead of an energy summit next week.
Members of the European Parliament, led by the Green Party’s Michael Bloss, said in a letter seen by Bloomberg that the development of the project operated by Equinor ASA threatens globally agreed climate goals.
“It is clear that the exploration and development of new oil and gas fields is incompatible with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” says the letter, signed by a cross-section of MPs and sent in Sunak. “Rejecting the proposed Rosebank oil field would be a step in the right direction.”
Sunak’s office had no immediate comment.
Nine countries, including the UK, France and Germany, as well as the European Commission, will gather in the Belgian port city of Ostend on April 24 for the North Sea Summit. The development of Britain’s largest untapped oil field and its impact on the climate threatens to overshadow the event which aims to showcase cooperation with the EU in the wake of Brexit.
EU lawmakers said burning its extracted oil and gas would generate CO2 emissions equivalent to those produced annually by the 28 lowest-income nations combined.
Equinor is seeking a final investment decision on the project, located west of Scotland’s Shetland Islands, before the end of June. It is not expected to start pumping oil and gas until at least 2026. Daily production of 70,000 barrels of oil and 21 million cubic feet of gas, expected by 2027, would make it one of the UK’s largest fields .
–With help from Kitty Donaldson.
