UK Gov’t Admits Error in Environmental Reviews for Offshore Leases

Hours after the start of hearings on a court challenge to Equinor’s Rosebank lease on the UK continental shelf, the newly-elected government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer admitted that the previous government had improperly approved Rosebank’s environmental impact assessment. 

In a hearing Wednesday at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, government solicitor Chris Pirie said that assessments of the project’s impact had not incorporated evidence on “the effects on climate of the combustion of oil and gas to be extracted from the fields.” 

The UK Supreme Court recently ruled that this greenhouse gas review is a requirement for new oil and gas lease evaluations. Two environmental groups – Greenpeace and Uplift – argue that courts should also invalidate Rosebank’s impact assessment because a full downstream emissions review was not done. 

In court, Pirie suggested that if the court decides to intervene, the government would prefer to request an addendum to the existing environmental review for Rosebank, then make a new decision on whether the project could proceed. This would avoid the time and cost of starting over with a new review. 

Lawyers for Shell’s Jackdaw project – a defendant in the same lawsuit – also accepted that the previous government had made an error of law in granting an offshore lease without a full emissions review. However, they argued that the lease approval had been granted in good faith under the law as it was understood at the time, and that the projects might be suspended indefinitely if they were forced to undergo another round of permitting evaluation. Equinor is expected to make similar arguments, according to court filings previewed by the Financial Times.