The First Minister may be dancing a merry jig with her Green partner Patrick Harvie over Shell’s decision to withdraw from investment in the Cambo oil field but as they look over their shoulders they will recognise another participant in this drama that could yet let sanity prevail.
The energy company Siccar Point still holds a 70 per cent share and is not yet ready to concede, although they may be branded and dismissed by a vocal minority of activists such as Greenpeace as greedy capitalists who maintain that new oil and gas investments only serve to slow down transition.
Such warped and simplistic logic is hard to fathom. Anyone with a grain of sense knows that fossil fuels and their countless derivatives are currently indispensable to modern life.
Of course it is recognised that they are finite and that new technologies must be developed but the mad scramble to net-zero carbon emissions is a utopian green illusion that will be unnecessarily and ruinously costly both to the Scottish people and the nation. A pragmatic approach allowing a more measured transition by utilising our own oil and gas reserves is surely a more sensible option than hiding behind a green smokescreen of fake net-zero imported oil and a reliance on intermittent renewable energy.
Neil J Bryce, Kelso, Scottish Borders
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