Skip to content 
She also said a decision on Rosebank, the largest untapped oil field in the North Sea, would take “a bit longer”.
The UK government is considering whether to grant permission for the two projects, which were initially approved by the previous Conservative administration before the courts ruled that the full environmental impact of fossil fuel drilling should be taken into account.
Read more:
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s breakfast program on Friday, Douglas Alexander said: “Our predecessors, the Conservatives, made such a mess of the approval process, both for Jackdaw and Rosebank, that they ended up in court.
“And so we are careful, careful, and often very careful in what we say publicly about these decisions, because we don’t want to see further delay as a result of more court cases.
“I’m careful in what I say publicly because we don’t want to make the same mistakes as our conservative predecessors, which led to the entire program being delayed as a consequence of a court challenge.”
He said he “welcomed” Ms Fahnbulleh’s announcement that a decision on Jackdaw was imminent – but declined to be drawn on whether a decision had been made yet or when an announcement would be made.
“The decision is on Miatta’s desk. This is necessarily, even within the government, a fairly closed-box process,” he said.
Mr Alexander was also asked about First Minister John Swinney’s comment on Thursday that GB Energy, which is headquartered in Aberdeen, had so far done “literally, absolutely nothing”.
“I think the First Minister needs to be a bit careful not to throw these statements around when the reality is capital is starting to be withdrawn from GB Energy,” Mr Alexander said.
“I was at the headquarters in Aberdeen when His Majesty the King opened the headquarters of GB Energy.
“We’ve put billions of pounds of capital behind it.
“At (a) conference that took place in Liverpool a few weeks ago, we established a new component for GB Energy that will provide competition on the grid, because every member of parliament in any part of the UK will hear from local employers the urgency of getting grid connections now.
“So I’m afraid it’s just not right to say GB Energy didn’t do anything.”
He was also asked how many people would be employed by the organization, the president Juergen Maier had initially said that it would employ 1,000 people in the next 20 years.
“We never tried to establish a headquarters with hundreds or thousands of bureaucrats,” Mr. Alexander said.
“What we wanted to do was use GB Energy as a catalytic investor, providing jobs in the supply chain, not just in Aberdeen but across the country.”
