Carbon Capture and Storage at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire

That this House condemns the decision by the UK Government not to proceed with the Acorn carbon capture and storage facility at St Fergus in Aberdeenshire which proposed taking and storing carbon dioxide from the Goldeneye field in the North Sea and the refinery in Grangemouth to be stored in the north east of Scotland; believes that St Fergus was best placed of all of the locations in the UK to deliver carbon capture, utilisation and storage given the existing infrastructure, the skills and expertise available and the capacity for CO2 storage in the North Sea; laments the failure to grasp the opportunity for oil and gas companies, domestic supply chain businesses and the wider economy to utilise the considerable skills and expertise of those currently employed in the oil and gas sector to create thousands of green jobs in the future; views this decision as the third deeply cynical and politically motivated betrayal of the communities of the north east of Scotland to have taken place, including by a Conservative Government in 2015 and a Labour Prime Minister and Chancellor in 2007; believes these decisions to be the price of the Union which has seen Scotland send £350 billion since the 1980s to the UK Treasury in oil and gas revenues with zero return rather than making a significant contribution to achieving the ambition of net zero.