CLIMATE campaigners have gone to Scotland’s highest court to launch a legal challenge to plans for new oil and gas extraction in Scottish waters.

Greenpeace and Uplift took their battle against the exploitation of the Rosebank oil field north-west of Shetland and the Jackdaw oil field off Aberdeen to the Court of Session in Edinburgh today.

The groups condemned a lack of transparency in North Sea Transition Authority decisions to grant licences to oil giants Equinor and Ithaca for Rosebank and Shell for Jackdaw in the face of a climate emergency being declared by devolved parliaments and in town halls across the land.

They argued that the authority had failed to properly consider the future environmental impact of emissions that would be created by the extraction and use of Rosebank’s estimated 500 million barrels of oil or Jackdaw’s 300 million barrels over their lifetimes and nor had it taken into account the impact on marine life in what are protected areas of the continental shelf.

Ruth Crawford KC, representing Greenpeace, told the court that these failures meant the granting of the licences in the absence of all relevent information on the environmental impacts amounted  to a “substantive error of law” and called for the developments to be paused while the oil companies prepared and submitted revised impact assessments.

“It was not simply a matter of discretion on whether or not to take emissions into account. It is a matter of the law the impact of emissions had to be taken into account,” she said.

Backing the action, Fossil Free London’s Joanna Warrington commented: “Rosebank is a desperate, reckless attempt by oil giants to extract profits from a dying industry.

“It’s time for Equinor and Ithaca to face the facts that recent legal victories for the climate in UK courts make clear — the sun is setting on new oil infrastructure.”

Branding the develpments “immoral and unlawful,” Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater MSP said: “We can’t afford to continue endlessly exploiting fossil fuel resources in the North Sea.

“Workers in Shetland and the north-east need a just transition to secure green jobs for the future, not false promises of endless fossil fuel jobs.”

Shell asserted that Jackdaw was a “vital project for UK energy security.” This was echoed by Equinor, which described Rosebank as “vital for the UK” in terms of local investment, jobs and energy security.

The case, before Lord Ericht, continues.