Government being ‘cautious’ about public announcements on Jackdaw and Rosebank

The UK Government is being “cautious” about making public announcements over its decisions on the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields in order to avoid the “mistakes” of the previous government, the Scottish Secretary has said.

On Thursday Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh told a conference in London that a decision on whether to give the green light to the Jackdaw gas field is “imminent”.

She also said a decision on Rosebank, the largest untapped oil field in the North Sea, will take “a bit longer”.

The UK Government is considering whether to grant permission for the two projects, which were initially approved by the previous Conservative administration before the courts ruled the full environmental impacts of the fossil fuels drilled should be taken into account.

Speaking on the BBC’s Radio Scotland Breakfast programme on Friday, Douglas Alexander said: “Our predecessors, the Conservatives, made such a mess of the process of approval, both for Jackdaw and Rosebank, that they ended up in court.

“And that’s why we are cautious, careful, and often quite circumspect in what we say publicly about these decisions, because we don’t want to see further delay as a result of more court action.

“I’m careful in what I say publicly because we don’t want to make the same mistakes as our Conservative predecessors, which led to the whole programme being delayed as a consequence of judicial challenge.”

He said he “welcomed” Ms Fahnbulleh’s announcement that a decision on Jackdaw is imminent – but refused to be drawn on whether a decision had been made yet, or when an announcement would be made.

“The decision is on Miatta’s desk. That is necessarily, even within government, a pretty closed box process,” he said.

Mr Alexander was also quizzed about First Minister John Swinney’s comment on Thursday that GB Energy, which is headquartered in Aberdeen, has so far done “literally, absolutely nothing”.

“I think the First Minister needs to be a little cautious not to keep throwing out these statements when the reality is capital is starting to be deployed by GB Energy,” Mr Alexander said.

“I was at the headquarters in Aberdeen when His Majesty the King opened the headquarters of GB Energy.

“We’ve put billions of pounds of capital behind it.

“At (a) conference that took place in Liverpool just a couple of weeks ago, we established a new component for GB Energy, which is going to provide competition on the grid because any member of Parliament in any part of the UK will hear from local employers the urgency of getting grid connections right now.

“So I’m afraid it’s simply not true to say GB Energy has done nothing.”

He was also asked how many people are employed by the organisation, with chairman Juergen Maier having initially said it would employ 1,000 people over the next 20 years.

“We never sought to establish a headquarters with hundreds or thousands of bureaucrats,” Mr Alexander said.

“What we wanted to do was to use GB Energy as a catalytic investor, providing jobs in the supply chain, not just in Aberdeen but right across the country.”