A former Scottish Government adviser has accused First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of “taking flight from reason” after hardening her stance against fracking.
Professor Paul Younger, who was appointed to a Scottish Government taskforce to examine unconventional oil and gas extraction, slammed comments made by the SNP leader during the Scottish election campaign.
He said the SNP “need not be surprised when any scientist who respects the most basic norms of professional integrity” refuses to work with its ministers in future.
And the Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh described Ms Sturgeon’s anti-fracking comments as damaging the case for independence – and said the comments would be warmly welcomed by Vladimir Putin.
Mr Younger, previously described by the SNP as an “energy engineering expert” said he was “flabbergasted” that all but one of Scotland’s main parties were “trashing” the fracking industry, which he says could re-employ North Sea oil and gas workers in a “far safer environment”.
He added: “The Scottish offshore workforce will simply be abandoned to unemployment, or at best, to far less skilled, less lucrative jobs.
“The only real winner in all of this is Vladimir Putin, who cannot wait to add Scotland to the list of countries that will shortly come to depend on importing gas from Russia.
“I remain utterly baffled as to why a party that claims to want independence for Scotland is happy to forego jobs and indigenous energy security when both are in peril, placing Scotland in precarious dependency on England for both.”
Ms Sturgeon has said she is “highly sceptical” of fracking and has come under pressure from Labour, the Greens, and Liberal Democrats to ban the controversial gas extraction method.
She said she would rule out fracking if there was “any suggestion” it harmed the environment – a move which Mr Younger called an “election tactic”.
During a TV election debate Ms Sturgeon suggested Scottish Government research of fracking decommissioning could have been ordered to justify a ban, saying “perhaps what we’re trying to show is just how expensive and difficult it might be to do that”.
But in 2015, Energy Minister Fergus Ewing had said “we should never close our minds” to new technologies and that a final decision would be taken with evidence without prejudging it.
Mr Younger added: “The SNP Government’s brief flirtation with evidence based policy-making has been swiftly superseded by policy-based evidence making”.
A moratorium on unconventional oil and gas was introduced in 2015 and is expected to remain in place until research is completed next year.
An SNP spokesman said that a decision over whether to allow fracking would be based on “both evidence and public opinion”. He added: “Unless it can be proven beyond any doubt that there is no risk to health, communities or the environment, there will be no fracking in Scotland.”
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