Shell and Equinor have asked the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland to uphold the UK government’s approval of two North Sea oil and gas projects, Jackdaw and Rosebank.
Environmental group Greenpeace is challenging the approvals in an effort to halt the developments.
Shell is defending the 2022 approval of the Jackdaw gas field, while Equinor and its partner Ithaca Energy are facing a related challenge to the 2023 approval of the Rosebank oilfield.
The hearing began on Tuesday. Shell’s defence follows a recent legal victory in the Netherlands, where it overturned a court order to accelerate carbon reduction efforts.
Meanwhile, TotalEnergies is defending new UK oil and gas exploration licences in a separate case at London’s High Court.
In August, the UK government decided not to defend Greenpeace’s case. This decision came after a Supreme Court ruling requiring authorities to consider emissions from fossil fuel use, not just extraction, when assessing projects.
Greenpeace argued that the Jackdaw and Rosebank approvals did not address these downstream emissions, which it claimed made the approvals unlawful.
In December 2023, Greenpeace UK and Uplift launched new legal actions targeting Rosebank’s approval. Equinor and Ithaca Energy had committed $3.8bn to the project in September 2023, moving forward after receiving approval from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).
Equinor estimates that Rosebank contains 300 million barrels of oil, with Phase 1 expected to yield about 245 million barrels.
Shell finalised its investment decision on the Jackdaw project in July 2022. The Jackdaw gas field will connect to Shell’s Shearwater gas hub.
Production is expected to begin in the mid-2020s, with Jackdaw projected to supply around 6% of the UK’s North Sea gas output at peak. Operational emissions are estimated to be less than 1% of total emissions from the UK North Sea basin.
The Jackdaw field is situated about 250km east of Aberdeen, close to the UK-Norway boundary, and is expected to reach peak production of 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
