The Tories’ huge new oilfield is a moral obscenity – but Rosebank can still be stopped | Caroline Lucas

At what point does allowing this to continue become more violent than burning it all down?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Nothing could be further from the truth: 90% of Rosebank’s reserves are in oil but will be “sold on the open market” with the most likely destination being the continent of Europe, according to Equinor, the Oslo-listed company that part-owns the field, thus proving the move is highly unlikely to make the slightest difference to UK energy bills.

What they might not tell you is that the Treasury is gifting this fossil fuel giant – which recently announced record 2022 global profits of £62bn – a tax break straight from the public purse worth a reported £3.75bn.

This giveaway is the result of an egregious loophole in the windfall tax, meaning that for every £100 fossil fuel companies plunge into yet more climate-wrecking oil and gas, they can claim £91.25 back from the Treasury.

The government always parrots the line, as the climate minister Graham Stuart did when responding to a question of mine in a parliamentary debate earlier this year, that “we cannot switch off fossil fuels overnight”.

The Climate Change Committee’s 2023 Progress Report in June clearly stated that “expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with net zero”, and that requiring some oil and gas in the years to come “does not in itself justify the development of new North Sea fields”.

The US, the EU and others are already starting to embrace a livable future, with a whole suite of abundant and affordable renewable technologies being developed to deliver warm homes and genuine energy security, and to provide long-term, skilled and stable jobs in growing green industries.

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