Professor John FitzGerald:

The council has not published on this as yet. I think pumping more oil is not part of the solution to climate change. The one area where there would be a concern is that in the next 20 years, gas will be a significant part of the solution.

One example is compressed natural gas for heavy goods vehicles. If one could, for the next 15 to 20 years, switch people in urban areas from using oil to using gas then that would be beneficial. With electricity as the backup supply we will, hopefully, close peat and coal production but electricity production will be very dependent on gas. A secure supply of gas is important if one could separate it from oil. Pumping oil is not a solution for climate change and does the opposite.