The Scottish Affairs Committee's report on North Sea policy is absolutely right to conclude that, in recent years, there has been a disastrous failure to plan for job losses at Grangemouth and in North Sea oil & gas. But its findings are unfortunately already out of date. 🧵 In short, the SAC report doesn't consider the UK gov's just-published Clean Energy Jobs Plan, which is not only the most comprehensive plan yet for creating clean jobs at scale, inc. 40k direct jobs in Scotland--it's the ONLY plan we've ever had. /2

This would be laughable if it wasn't so serious: yet again, the Tories are claiming that we can get "all our oil and gas" from the North Sea & that we should be doing even more to support the industry to extract. Here's why we should treat that with maximum scepticism: 1. This is a matter of geology not politics. The NS has been declining for decades, which is why the 100s of licences the Tories issued in the last decade have produced a grand total of 16 days worth of gas. Most of what's left is oil, which brings us to the commercial reality...

Kemi Badenoch was pretty loose with the facts about the Rosebank oil field during #PMQs just now. Let's take a closer look shall we?
🧵 First, let's address the jobs question. Aside from mixing up Equinor & Shell (a strong start), Badenoch went on to bemoan the impact on "thousands" of jobs that stopping Rosebank would have. So far, Equinor has made a decision to have the main offshore vessel for Rosebank...
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BREAKING: The UK gov't has rightly recognised that approving the Rosebank oil field without taking into account the full extent of its climate impacts was unlawful. It has conceded that argument in our & Greenpeace's legal challenge against the field.
So what does that mean?
🧵 1st, it means the govt accepts that the Supreme Court ruling in Sarah Finch's case against an oil field in Surrey also applies to offshore fields. In Finch, the Court held that the GHG emissions from burning oil & gas must be considered in the environmental assessment...
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When Sunak’s oil & gas bill is debated in Parliament today, the gov't will claim new licensing is better for the climate or, as @Jeremy_Hunt put it on the weekend, “domestic oil and gas is 4 times cleaner than imported oil and gas”.
Here's why that statement is patently false:
🧵 The only way to get to the “4x cleaner” outcome is by comparing UK gas production to the very dirtiest kind of gas imported into the UK (LNG). But:
1. This completely ignores oil production, which is convenient because UK oil production is more polluting than the global average

Within days of fossil fuels taking centre stage at COP28, Uplift & Greenpeace have today filed separate legal challenges against the UK government's disastrous decision to approve the Rosebank oil field.

🧵 on the many reasons Uplift think it's unlawful:
thetimes.co.uk/article/climat… 1. We think it was irrational for the UK government not to consider the emissions from burning Rosebank's roughly 500 million barrels of oil when assessing its environmental impact. We know that burning the world's existing oil & gas reserves will take us past 1.5C...

Today those notorious eco-zealots the International Energy Agency have published another report on how irreconcilable expansion of oil and gas exploration and production is with staying within 1.5°C.

🧵on how this squares with what's happening in the UK
iea.org/reports/the-oi… The IEA is clear that no new exploration for O&G in aggregate is needed if countries meet their existing climate & energy pledges. Plus, in a 1.5°C world, no new conventional O&G projects with a long lead time are needed. In fact, even some existing production would be cut...
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The UK government has today announced an intention to hold annual oil & gas licensing rounds, which Energy Sec @ClaireCoutinho was on the Today programme defending this AM.
Let's check if the government's claims on energy security, climate, jobs & tax stand up to scrutiny:
🧵 Let's be clear that the headline announcement is pure political posturing. There have been annual licensing rounds for most of the past decade & there's currently nothing stopping the North Sea Transition Authority, the body in charge of licensing, from holding annual rounds
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The UK gov today announced the award of 27 new oil & gas licences--part of the 100 licences it's been talking about awarding since late last year. Oil and gas licensing will also likely feature in the King's speech next week.
🧵on why this is bad politics rather than good policy The govt is touting new licenses as supporting UK energy security, but this could not be further from the truth. After 13 years under the Conservatives, the hundreds of new licences they have issued have so far provided the UK with a grand total of just 16 days worth of gas.
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Hello & good morning! A lot of heat and not much light in the last 24 hours about new oil & gas licences in the UK, so let's take a closer look shall we?
A 🧵
/1 This is not news. The oil & gas regulator, the NSTA, launched a new licensing round in October last year. Today's headlines are about that licensing round, which will result in awards being made to companies in the next couple of months:

/2nstauthority.co.uk/news-publicati…

Sunday Times' story on Labour not revoking approval of Rosebank is a non-story: it has always been Labour's position that it won't approve new oil & gas fields once in government; not revoke approvals already given.
/1 That doesn't change how utterly misconceived it would be for the UK govt to approve Rosebank nor the scale of public opposition @Equinor_UK and Ithaca face: there is overwhelming evidence that new oil & gas fields are incompatible with a safe climate

https://twitter.com/tessakhan/status/1663890587936862215?s=20

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New research from @UCL_Energy shows that the UK's energy system could be almost entirely fossil fuel-free by 2045, limiting the country’s exposure to volatile global markets and boosting energy security.

🧵 with a summary of their findings:

https://twitter.com/UCL_Energy/status/1666446703141044224

A genuinely energy-independent future for the UK is one where the fossil fuel dependence of the whole energy system is as low as possible. The research comprehensively shows no need to trade off sustainability, reliability and affordability. Decarbonisation = energy security
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Equinor & its friends in the UK govt often say how clean an oil field like Rosebank will be relative to other oil & gas fields.
Leaving aside the absurdity of focusing on the impact of extracting rather than burning Rosebank's O&G, here's the truth: 🧵
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standard.co.uk/business/busin… 1st, the CO2 intensity of Rosebank's oil & gas isn't even going to be low enough to meet the weak (according to the Climate Change Committee) targets in the North Sea Transition Deal, based on NSTD 2030 target for CO2 intensity compared to Rosebank's CO2 intensity projections.
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Lots to agree with in this @newscientist piece, including the value of a @fossiltreaty.
But let's be clear that the UK gov't absolutely *does* have the power to reject the Rosebank oil field and there's nothing stopping them from exercising that power.
newscientist.com/article/mg2583… The Energy Charter Treaty, for all its flaws, doesn't constrain the govt from rejecting Rosebank or Cambo. While the licence for exploring for Rosebank’s oil was issued in 2001, the licence-holders aren't permitted to extract that oil until they receive a development permit.
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Good morning to everyone but @MarkJCarney, UN Envoy on Climate & Finance. Carney is Chair of a company helping to drive forward development of the UK's largest undeveloped oil field, not to mention one of the worst deals the UK govt has ever considered: the Rosebank oil field.
🧵 Carney is Chair (& head of "Transition Investing") of Brookfield Asset Management which owns Altera Infrastructure. Altera owns the Floating Production Storage & Offloading (FPSO) vessel that will be used to process Rosebank’s oil. It's a core part of Rosebanks infrastructure
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Lots of headlines about BP this morning, but worth focusing on the fact that BP has dropped its 2030 goal of cutting oil & gas production from 40% to just 25%, 10% of which will come from its divestment from Rosneft. BP also decreased its 'low carbon spend' from 2021 to 2022.
/1 Despite loopholes in the 40% target that @PriceofOil pointed out, it was celebrated at the time as evidence that the industry can be trusted to drive the energy transition. Today is an unequivocal reminder that this is an industry driven by profit & clinging to incumbency.
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Not content with an embarrassingly weak windfall tax (the Shell CEO is the latest to suggest taxing them more in a social crisis might be a good idea), the UK govt is now hell-bent on rolling over completely for the O&G industry. THREAD
theguardian.com/politics/2022/…
/1 This isn't just about trying to evade scrutiny of new fracking projects (bad enough) but about ditching regulation of the whole North Sea basin. These regulations are there to protect our interests incl. the public purse, oil & gas workers, the marine environment, the climate.
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Wondering what to make of Liz Truss' announcement that she'll approve a new North Sea oil & gas licensing round when she's PM?
Here's a thread on why this is yet another egregious example of the UK Govt siding with oil & gas giants over the public.
thetimes.co.uk/article/tories… 1/ The UK is heading into a catastrophe caused by the price of gas. Soaring gas prices mean millions won't be able to heat their homes now & in the future given projections the gas price will stay high for years. NHS leaders have described what's coming as a humanitarian crisis.

Need more proof that the UK Gov is beholden to the oil & gas industry?
It's just announced a 1 WEEK public consultation on a deeply flawed windfall tax law that is a centrepiece of its response to a historic cost of living crisis. Here's why that's unacceptable & unlawful:
/1 There are well-established legal principles that apply to public consultations that require that "adequate time" be given for the public to consider and respond to a proposal. Official Cabinet Office guidance also reiterates this.
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The #SpringStatement is a shocking betrayal of millions of households in the UK who need urgent support.
@RishiSunak had an opportunity to help families via a windfall tax on extraordinary oil & gas profits, & failing to seize that is morally and intellectually indefensible.
/1 UK oil & gas cos are awash with cash. They're expected to enjoy the highest cash flows this year *since North Sea drilling began in the 70s*. They're also benefiting from a fiscal regime that has the lowest govt tax take in the world & the highest rate of return for investors.
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First Shell, now BP reveals the profits it's made from soaring gas prices. BP raked in £9.5 billion in profits last year, while people in the UK are forgoing meals to heat their homes.

BP says it needs all of this money to "accelerate the greening" of BP. Really?
THREAD 🧵
/1 BP has promised for years that it's ‘greening’ its operations. In reality, its investment in renewables (as a share of capital expenditure) declined from 5.6% in 2018 to 2.6% in 2019, according to the industry lobby group OGUK.
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