The debate about the future of the North Sea has become one of the most important economic, environmental and energy security discussions facing the UK.
Unfortunately, it has also become one of the most polarised. We need a more grown-up debate, grounded in facts rather than hysteria.
Too often, complex issues are reduced to slogans, while important facts about energy demand, emissions, jobs, tax revenues and security of supply are overlooked.
During a live interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC yesterday morning, Russell Borthwick, Chief Executive, Aberdeen & Grampian CHamber of Commerce, said: 'I was astonished to hear Uplift Executive Director Tessa Khan claim that the UK oil and gas sector is preventing the creation of renewables jobs.
This claim is without foundation.
What is actually slowing the development of new energy technologies is muddled government policy around spatial planning and transmission charging, alongside long delays in building the transmission and storage infrastructure needed to support them.
Meanwhile, established energy jobs are being lost at a rate of up to 1,000 every month, while STUC figures suggest that only around 1,000 new energy jobs have been created every year over the past decade.
Every lost job is one too many, but it increasingly feels as though skilled workers, their families and entire communities across the UK are being sacrificed in the name of blind ideology.
Nobody is in denial about the need for a cleaner energy system. But the reality is simple.
Today, around 75% of our energy demand still comes from oil and gas. The Climate Change Committee's latest carbon budget makes clear that the UK will continue to require billions of barrels of oil equivalent over the next 25 years.
We will need these resources to keep hospitals and schools running, heat our homes, move people and goods, and manufacture everything from everyday essentials to life-saving medicines.
Crucially, this continued demand is already factored into our net zero targets.
So the question is not whether we will need oil and gas. It is where we choose to get it from.
We already import almost half the oil and gas we consume, and our dependence on overseas supplies is growing.
Given current global tensions, we should be asking serious questions about the security, reliability and environmental consequences of those imports.
Consider this. In 2025, the UK's net spending on imported oil, gas and electricity totalled an extraordinary £84billion.
It does not need to be this way.
Contrary to the claims of some campaigners, the North Sea is far from empty. It still holds substantial resources capable of meeting a significant proportion of our energy needs as we continue the journey to net zero, provided the right investment and policy conditions are in place.
The government's election manifesto promised no new exploration licences but allowed existing projects to proceed. Yesterday's approval of Jackdaw should therefore be just the start.
Many other projects are ready to move forward, supporting skilled jobs, generating tax revenues and producing energy under one of the world's most stringent regulatory regimes.
And there is an environmental argument that cannot simply be wished away.
North Sea gas has a substantially lower production and supply emissions footprint than LNG shipped thousands of miles to Britain by tanker. According to the North Sea Transition Authority, imported LNG has around three times the pre-combustion emissions intensity of domestically produced gas. Jackdaw is even cleaner.
Every additional unit of gas we produce here is one we potentially avoid importing from overseas.
So, to be clear, the only thing being uplifted by the increasingly hysterical arguments of some protest groups is our dependence on imported energy, along with the global emissions that come with it.
We cannot make Britain greener by exporting our energy production, our jobs and our emissions overseas.'
Source: Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce
