Kemi Badenoch slams ‘ludicrous’ Andy Burnham for allowing oil drilling off the Falklands but NOT in the North Sea

Mrs Badenoch fumed back, declaring the UK’s lawyers were in international court defending drilling off the coasts of the Falklands rather than approving Rosebank.

At the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg yesterday, the Argentine Government’s lawyers claimed the UK had acted illegally to give the green light for the Sea Lion project to go ahead.

Israeli firm Navitas Petroleum owns a 65 per cent stake in Sea Lion, while British company Rockhopper Exploration owns the remaining 35 per cent.

Lying around 136 miles north of the Falklands in the South Atlantic Ocean, the oil field is believed to contain the equivalent of around 900 million barrels of oil and sits approximately 1.6 miles beneath the seabed, itself at a depth of nearly 1,500 feet.

The Tory leader also noted how former Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, was against the plans.

She asked: “Why else did it take the Labour Government two years to approve Jackdaw while the Foreign Secretary [Mr Miliband] was in charge, and now he’s gone, it happened just like that?”

“That’s the real reason they didn’t do it – the Foreign Secretary instructed Government lawyers not to fight the court case.”

Rosebank is Britain’s largest untapped field and is estimated to contain 300 million barrels of recoverable oil.

Environmentalists have fiercely opposed the site, with Mr Miliband himself once describing it as “climate vandalism”, but industry leaders say it would boost the UK’s economy and energy security.

Labour approved new gas drilling at the Jackdaw site, also a North Sea project, last month, with Mr Burnham saying he “welcomes” the decision.

After Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh confirmed the approval, the Prime Minister said: “At a time when people are really struggling, it’s right that we look in a responsible way at maximising the existing energy reserves we have in Britain that could help.

“We’re committed to moving towards renewable energy and reaching net zero by 2050. But even on our ambitious climate path, we’ll still require oil and gas as part of our energy needs for decades to come.”

Ms Fahnbulleh confirmed the approved Jackdaw gas field will begin to supply Britons as soon as “this winter”.

A move to give the green light to Rosebank is backed by almost two-thirds of those who voted for Labour at the last general election.

Last week, polling for Offshore Energies UK revealed 65 per cent of those who backed Labour in 2024 wanted to see the project approved by the Government.

Less than a fifth (17 per cent), meanwhile, want it turned down.

The exchange of barbs between the Prime Minister and Mrs Badenoch today comes just days after Labour’s Energy Independence Bill was presented to Parliament.

The “landmark legislation” is set to bring an end to decades of searching for new oil and gas fields in British waters.

The Energy Independence Bill, which contains a range of measures including a formal ban on fracking, was described by the Energy Secretary as “a first down payment on fixing a broken system”.

It includes laws to scrap gas standing charges, reforms to speed up grid connections and a pledge to give communities a greater stake in clean energy projects.

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