Meeting of the Parliament 12 November 2025
The Scottish Government is also dragging its feet in relation to the pace at which we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, because it is watering down its heat in buildings agenda.
Even in domestic terms, Rosebank will not help the Scottish or UK economies. It is viable only with millions of pounds in subsidies, with taxpayers being asked to shoulder 80 per cent of the costs. All told, the development is expected to add £250 million to the UK Treasury’s black hole. It will not help households with rising energy bills. Ninety per cent of Rosebank’s reserves will be exported, mostly to the European continent. Even the portions that are sold here will be subject to prices set on the open market, so what we pay to heat our homes will be unchanged.
Rosebank is very far from a silver bullet for the North Sea workforce. With the whole North Sea basin in decline, as has been pointed out, the number of jobs has already dropped by a staggering 40 per cent. The decline is terminal, as research for the Scottish Government has shown. The only way to give the workers of the North Sea a secure future is to support them to use their skills to build Scotland’s renewables future. Indeed, the truth that Equinor and UK ministers want to hide is that Rosebank will, in essence, redistribute wealth away from the public purse and investment in Scotland’s renewable futures and towards wealthy fossil fuel giants.
If all that is still not enough to bring Scottish National Party ministers off the fence, perhaps the fact that Rosebank profits will actively fund some of those who are operating illegally in the occupied Palestinian territories will be the final straw. Equinor’s minority partner in developing Rosebank is Ithaca Energy, which is majority owned by the Delek Group—an Israeli fuel conglomerate that is operating in the occupied territories and has been flagged for potential human rights breaches. If Rosebank is developed, the Delek Group is expected to receive about £253 million in revenue from the field. Profits from an oil field in Scotland’s waters could financially benefit a company that is linked to human rights violations against the Palestinian people. That would be just three months after we voted for a package of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel and companies that are complicit in the occupation.
For all those reasons—complicity with occupation and war crime, betrayal of Scotland’s economic interests and the extraordinary scale of climate destruction—the Parliament must vote to oppose the Rosebank field.
I move,
That the Parliament opposes the development of the Rosebank oil and gas field.
15:05