Opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea are incompatible with the Paris Agreement

The opening of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea is incompatible with the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

That’s the main conclusion of a study by researchers at University College London (UK) and released on Tuesday. The report is based on papers published in journals such as Science and Nature. The authors call on the UK Government to stop licensing new oil and gas exploration, and to refuse development consent for projects already authorised. In practice, they point out that this would mean the end of the issuance of new licenses for oil and gas exploration. In addition, they ask the British Executive to decide not to allow the development of the North Sea oil fields already authorized, which includes the controversial Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, whose previous approvals were declared illegal by a Scottish court last January.

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