Former deputy first minister Kate Forbes has backed new North Sea drilling and criticised the UK Government for increasing reliance on imported energy while domestic resources remain available.
Forbes said her time outside frontline politics had reinforced how 'irrational' it appeared that Britain was refusing to exploit its own energy reserves while relying on imports with higher emissions and no benefit to UK jobs or the economy.
Speaking in the Sunday Times, she described plans to spend billions on new liquefied natural gas import infrastructure while decisions on the Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field remain outstanding as 'ludicrous'.
'Most governments around the world are prioritising domestic production,' Forbes said. 'At a time like this, we shouldn’t be increasing our reliance on imports, which we know has a higher level of emissions.
'Apart from that, ordinary people are going into winter, they know that they’re still reliant on oil and gas to a varying extent. They want to know that their government can guarantee the supply of that.
'Our UK government cannot guarantee what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. They can guarantee what happens at home.'
Forbes also warned Scotland risks a 'neither-nor' outcome in which North Sea production and jobs decline too quickly while the country also fails to establish itself as a clean energy leader.
'By its very nature, a transition requires you to have both (oil and gas and renewables) in play at the same time,' she said.
'I contend that there is a grave risk that we are heading for a neither-nor. In other words, we won’t be a world leader on clean energy and neither will we have the depths of talent and the infrastructure in the oil and gas sector.
'Now, the Scottish government has an opportunity and a role to lobby the UK government, to be clear in policy terms what it wants to see.'
Source: Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce
