Approximately 80 miles north-west of the Shetland Islands, on the Scottish coast, sits the controversial unexplored oil field – Rosebank. Over the past three years, Rosebank and Jackdaw (a twin oil field which sits 150 miles north-east of Aberdeen) have been at the epicentre of an ongoing debate over the direction of UK energy. Is it right to drill down and retrieve new fossil fuels in full knowledge of their impact on global temperatures? And, considering the economic damage caused by the UK’s continued reliance on imported natural gas, if fossil fuels are to stay in use until a renewable future has been fully realised, does it make more sense to rely on resources closer to home?
According to the leader of Scottish Labour, Anas Sarwar, the UK should heed the logic intrinsic to the second question. “Energy security is national security,” he told me when we met on a Tuesday afternoon at London’s County Hall. “To put it bluntly, if the choice is more expensive imports from despotic regimes like Russia or new oil and gas, I think the answer has to be new oil and gas.”
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