GREEN energy tycoon Dale Vince has backed the approval of the controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields.
It comes after the environmental campaigner said just months ago that new North Sea drilling would be a “betrayal of millions of us” if given the green light by the UK Government.
But, on Monday, Vince told the BBC that he was now “up for” the projects to go ahead.
“If we price control wholesale energy across the board, like we have retail, we have to do this to reform our energy system. If we do that, we pave the way to make sense of Rosebank and Jackdaw new drilling sites that are already licensed, because we can save money,” the Ecotricity boss said.
“And then this secondary argument that's being made for new drilling. That if we're going to use fossil fuels, we might as well make them here as to bring them from abroad.
“That makes more sense and comes to the fore. We will use fossil fuels for a number of years to come, and it makes sense to make them here if we can also save money here and create some jobs. I'm up for it.”
Environmental activists fear the impact that extracting fossil fuels from the UK’s largest remaining untapped oil field – which lies about 80 miles west of Shetland – would have on climate change.
The decision on whether Rosebank and Jackdaw can go ahead will be a key environmental test for Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
The proposals are both now in the hands of ministers, with the consultation on Jackdaw having closed a week ago
Bosses at Adura, the company behind both projects, said they would result in £10.8 billion of investment – with more than three quarters of this cash expected to be spent in the UK.
Between them, Rosebank and Jackdaw could support 3500 jobs at the peak of construction, with 880 people then employed over the lifetime of production.
Adura added that Rosebank alone is projected to produce about 69,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak, with this the equivalent to roughly 10% of the anticipated output from the UK Continental Shelf.
And the company said Rosebank and Jackdaw together have the potential to make up 10% of domestic natural gas production.
However, environmentalists claim that Rosebank would produce more than 250 million tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to 70% of UK annual emissions.
The decision on the two projects comes after a summer which has seen soaring temperatures in both the UK and Europe, as well as wildfires in both Britain and the continent.
Robert Palmer, deputy director at Uplift, which campaigns for a transition away from fossil fuels, said: “While the oil and gas industry does everything in its power to push Burnham into Trump’s drill baby, drill agenda, the nation’s new Prime Minister has watched the UK and Europe burn baby, burn.”
Palmer insisted: “Enough is enough. Burnham needs to look out of the window and acknowledge that this project will make the climate crisis worse and do nothing but rip off Britain. Rosebank must be rejected once and for all.”
Angharad Hopkinson, from Greenpeace UK, said: “In the midst of a devastating drought with the country literally on fire, the Government should look to the obscene profits of oil and gas companies to pay for some of the changes we desperately need to keep families and workers safe.”
Production at both Rosebank and Jackdaw had been approved by the previous Conservative government, but those decisions were quashed after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, leaving Labour ministers to decide whether or not drilling should go ahead.
