THE government has been urged to halt the “climate-wrecking exploration” in the Rosebank oil and gas field.

Rosebank, which is in the north-west of Shetland, is the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea and could produce almost 70,000 barrels of oil each day at its peak.

Norwegian state-controlled company Equinor has submitted proposals to Westminster to begin production at the site, predicted to have some 500 million barrels of oil.

Westminster announced last year that it could approve over 100 new oil and gas explorations.

Scottish Greens environment spokesman Mark Ruskell said that Rosebank is “a climate disaster waiting to happen.”

He said: “We are already way past the point when we should have been moving away from oil and gas, yet Westminster is doubling down on it.”

Mr Ruskell said that “2023 is a key year for our recovery and for our planet, and we cannot squander it … it must be a year of transition and change.

“Yet, with over 100 new climate-wrecking oil and gas exploration licences in the pipeline, and even a new coal mine in Cumbria, the UK government has been utterly unwilling to take the climate action that is so badly needed.

“Renewable energy is the cheapest and cleanest energy available.

“But we cannot realise our renewable potential as long as we are tied to a Tory government that is more concerned with the profits of its friends in the fossil fuel industry than it is with our environment.”

Mr Ruskell said that the “climate vandalism has gone on long enough,” adding: “This must be the year when [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak and his colleagues finally do the right thing for people and planet.”