Chameleon Magazine

Perhaps it is one of those subjects that becomes slightly awkward when you have spent years talking about moving Scotland away from oil and gas while workers in the North East watch jobs, investment and confidence disappear from an industry that has supported Scottish communities for generations.

Because while Scotland is repeatedly lectured about the need for an energy transition, more than 8,000 miles away the Sea Lion oil project around the Falklands is moving ahead, with drilling planned and first oil expected in 2028.

And here is the really interesting part: some of the operation is expected to be run from Aberdeen.

So apparently Aberdeen is still perfectly useful when Britain wants expertise to help develop an oilfield beside the Falklands. It is just considerably more complicated when people suggest developing oilfields closer to Aberdeen itself.

You might have expected Scottish ministers to have something fairly substantial to say about that.

After all, these are the same politicians who regularly tell us how deeply concerned they are about Scottish jobs, Scottish industry and a “just transition” for North Sea workers.

Yet when a new oil development backed by the British Government starts progressing in the South Atlantic, the silence becomes rather noticeable.

Perhaps nobody wants to ask the uncomfortable question.

If producing oil is still economically and strategically necessary, why are Scottish workers being asked to carry so much of the cost of proving that Britain is supposedly moving beyond it?