SCOTLAND’S highest court has upheld environmental campaigners’ legal challenge to the granting of licences for two new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Taking their case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Greenpeace and Uplift argued that the effects of downstream burning of fuel extracted from the Rosebank oil field, north-west of Shetland, and the Jackdaw gas field, off Aberdeen, had not been considered when licences to exploit them were issued in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

They insisted that this rendered unlawful the North Sea Transtition Authority (NSTA) decisions to grant permissions to oil and gas giants Shell, Equinor and Ithaca on behalf of the then Tory government.