Ruth Crawford KC, who is acting for Greenpeace during the case, told the court that the greenhouse gas emissions from Rosebank and Jackdaw would be “sizeable and significant” and would have a “substantial impact” on the environment and human health.
She said the UK government had admitted that it was an “error of law” to have failed to have taken into account greenhouse gas emissions from the eventual burning of oil and gas extracted from Rosebank and Jackdaw (known as Scope 3 emissions).
Ms Crawford said granting a licence was ultimately a political decision but it must be done only after a lawful consenting process which included an environmental impact assessment taking into account Scope 3 emissions.
She said politicians must not simply consider short-term issues when considering oil and gas projects but also the long-term effect on the climate.
In this case, she argued, they failed to do so (because information about Scope 3 emissions was not available).
To allow these two fields to proceed without a new environmental impact assessment taking into account Scope 3 emissions “would be to completely ignore that a crucial part of the decision making has not happened and will never happen.”
Greenpeace, she said, was not asking for oil rigs and drilling equipment to be removed. It was only asking that the oil and gas companies involved “do no further work to get petroleum from the fields.”
“The work must stop. No more. No less,” she concluded.
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