WWF Scotland hit out at the drilling plans yesterday, accusing the government of helping to take the UK further and further away from becoming a zero-carbon country and risking the environment.
Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “The move to exploit increasingly hard-to-reach oil reserves in environmentally fragile environments is extremely alarming.”
The BP operated Foinaven field, 118 miles west of Shetland, was the first field to be developed in the west of Shetland/Atlantic Margin area. It was discovered in 1992 and brought on stream using a floating production vessel in 1997.
Last year it still produced more than 2million barrels of oil equivalent. At its peak in 2002 it was producing more than 5million barrels a year.