THE Scottish Government is being urged to speak out against controversial plans to develop a huge new oil field off the coast of Shetland in the midst of a climate crisis.
Campaigners have said that an area of land larger than all of Scotland would be needed to counteract emissions from the proposed development.
If given the go-ahead the crude oil field, co-owned by Siccar Point Energy and Shell, could extract at least 150 million barrels of oil in its first phase - the emissions from which are equivalent to running a coal power station for 16 years.
However, environmental campaigners at Oxfam Scotland estimate that the 132 million tonnes of CO2 emissions that the field would produce would need an area of land 1.5 times the size of Scotland to counteract them.
READ MORE: Cambo oil field: What does it mean for climate targets?
We previously told how activists in Edinburgh blocked a UK Government building last month in a bid to stop the oil project going ahead.
Environmental activists have been highly critical of the move, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that to meet the 1.5C target in the Paris Agreement, there should be no more development of new oil, gas, or coal.
Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland, said in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in November the UK Government must intervene and “stop its climate credibility going up in smoke”.
As the summit is due to be held in Glasgow, Livingstone insisted that the Scottish Government have a “duty” to press UK ministers to reject the plans.
The Cambo oil field is located 125km north-west of the Shetland islands
Livingstone spoke out on the issue as Oxfam published a new report which estimated that for all current net-zero plans to be achieved, an area equivalent to all the farmland on earth would need to be converted to forest, putting food production at risk.
The report stated: “Oxfam has calculated that the total amount of land required for planned carbon removal could potentially be five times the size of India, or the equivalent of all the farmland on the planet.”
It stated that net-zero targets “instead of focusing primarily on the hard work of cutting carbon emissions, for example by rapidly ending the use of coal, oil and gas for electricity and oil for cars, rely instead on using other methods to remove carbon from the atmosphere”.
READ MORE: Cambo oil field: Thousands sign petition to stop Shetland oil project
The Tightening the Net report added: “The problem is this removal of carbon either relies on virtually unproven new technologies, or on a level of land use that is completely impossible and would lead to mass hunger and displacement of people across the world.”
Livingstone said: “All of our lives and futures depend on the world’s biggest polluters quickly, drastically and genuinely slashing their emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and supply chains.
“Instead, what we’re seeing is too many net-zero strategies being used as smokescreens to mask dirty behaviour: promising unrealistic carbon removal schemes in order to justify the continued plundering of our planet.
Protesters in Edinburgh blocked a UK Government building in July
“The proposed new Cambo oilfield is a clear climate contradiction.
"If the UK Government is to be a credible broker for a deal that can stop the planet overheating when it hosts the COP26 climate talks in November, it must intervene in the Cambo case and stop its climate credibility going up in smoke.
READ MORE: Cambo oil field: Edinburgh activists block UK Government building
“The Scottish Government has a duty to demand it does just that.”
Thousands of people signed a petition calling on the UK Government to stop the project going ahead after Friends of the Earth (FoE) penned an open letter to Boris Johnson.
They warned that allowing production to go ahead would have a “devastating” environmental impact.
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