Human rights impacts The dire outlook of climate change in excess of 1.5°C involves impacts on a range of internationally recognised human rights, including the rights to life, water and sanitation, health, food, a healthy environment, an adequate standard of living, housing, property, culture, self-determination, indigenous people, women, and development. Setting to one side their fossil fuel-related business activities to date, any future development of the Cambo oil field by Siccar Point Energy and Shell and the associated emissions would fuel future climate change-related human rights impacts, which are of the utmost severity and of an unprecedented scale.

The impacts of the Cambo oil field on human rights, and the implications for banks, were further elaborated in a September 2021 letter from ClientEarth addressed to the CEOs of 17 banks exposed to the project.

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency, the world’s most influential energy forecaster, produced a roadmap for the global energy sector to reach net zero by 2050. One of the essential conditions for the energy sector to reach net zero emissions, it found, is “a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels”, stating that “there is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway”. They add that there should be “no new oil and gas fields approved for development”.

Climate change impact The Cambo oil field would be able to produce 170 million barrels of oil a year - the climate equivalent of running 18 coal-fired power stations - over 25 years in the project’s first phase alone. This would result in 63.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, further endangering the adverse impacts of global warming.

CO2 emissions Shell A landmark Dutch court ruling recently required Shell to reduce its total CO2 emissions, including the emissions resulting from the use of the fossil fuels it produces. This has significant implications for the North Sea oil industry’s promises to reduce emissions from extracting oil and gas – to create a “net zero hydrocarbon basin” as the Scottish Government says – while ignoring the emissions from burning the oil and gas extracted (FoE Scotland).

Corruption investigation Petrofac A firm being investigated on corruption charges and founded by a major Tory donor is a contractor on the proposed Cambo oilfield in the North Sea. Petrofac, whose co-founder Ayman Asfari has along with his wife donated almost £900,000 to the Conservative Party, is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for allegedly paying million-pound bribes to secure contracts in nine different countries (DeSmog).