‘A long-delayed moment of truth for North Sea oil and Labour’s climate credentials’

In the Greenpeace office this week, I suggested running a sweepstake on when we would finally get a government decision on Jackdaw and Rosebank. One of the team drily pointed out that we had already had one. Years ago.

Jackdaw was approved in 2022 and Rosebank in 2023. Those decisions were subsequently ruled unlawful because ministers had failed to consider the emissions that would be created when the oil and gas were burned. That should have been the end of it, but years later, these zombie projects refuse to die.

A decision on Jackdaw is reportedly imminent, though Rosebank may come a little later. In the meantime, we have been left to parse repeated promises from the Prime Minister and Energy Secretary that they will take a “pragmatic” approach. If pragmatism is a euphemism for pro-fossil fuels, that begs a few questions.

What would be pragmatic about approving projects that will not cut bills, cannot reverse the North Sea’s decline as an oil and gas basin, and would deepen the climate crisis? Or allowing fossil-fuel misinformation and pressure from Donald Trump to dictate UK energy policy?

Start with bills – undeniably uppermost in ministers’ minds. The government’s own gas-security assessment could hardly be clearer. Gas is traded internationally and UK production represents a tiny fraction of global demand, so additional North Sea gas “will not lower prices nor materially boost supply”. Jackdaw’s total reserves would reduce Britain’s annual dependence on gas imports by only around two per cent on average. Rosebank’s oil would be sold at international prices, with most expected to go overseas for refining. Neither project offers UK households a reserved supply of cheap British fuel.

Then there are jobs. Every North Sea worker deserves a decent, secure and yes, unionised job. That is precisely why the industry’s inflated promises are so dangerous. In its own submissions, Adura, the Jackdaw operator, admits it would create just 27 additional full-time roles. Not nothing, but hardly an industrial renaissance. Most of the workforce highlighted by the company is already employed on the existing Shearwater platform.

Meanwhile, employment supported by UK oil and gas fell from about 441,000 in 2013 to roughly 206,000 in 2023, despite hundreds of licences being issued. More drilling has not arrested the basin’s geological decline. By contrast, Britain’s net-zero economy is already worth more than £100bn a year, supports around 1.1 million jobs and has an estimated £455bn investment pipeline. That is where “good growth in every postcode” will come from, not squeezing the last few drops from a declining basin.

Nor is this a credible energy-security strategy. Security means reducing our exposure to volatile international fossil-fuel markets, not producing a little more oil and gas to sell at prices still shaped by a capricious US president and Middle East conflict. A genuinely pragmatic approach would invest at the scale workers and communities need in offshore wind, grids, home insulation and the immense task of safely decommissioning North Sea infrastructure.

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So on policy terms, this seems a no-brainer. What’s curious is that the political calculus of consenting seems equally misguided. The Prime Minister promised problem-solving over point-scoring. Approving these fields would create more problems than it solves, delivering no meaningful relief on bills and no answer to industrial decline, with any modest short-term economic benefit being obliterated by the long-term cost of climate harm.

And the damage to Labour would be lasting too. Early in the Burnham administration, the North Sea risks becoming what tuition fees became for the Lib Dems. Not an expression of the pragmatism of tough choices but a policy and political blunder that undermined the party’s reputation for competence and character with its core constituencies for years to come. Chasing the anti-net-zero right means fighting on its terrain, accepting its false premises and alienating people who might otherwise give this new Government time to deliver.

In his emphatic conference speech, the Prime Minister showed an appetite for confronting sacred cows and vested interests. Approving Jackdaw and Rosebank would do the opposite, leaving the myth of North Sea abundance unchallenged and the fossil-fuel lobby ascendant.

After years of delay, the only facts that have changed are those that show the pace and scale of ecological breakdown escalating ever higher. Ministers reluctant to announce further fossil fuel drilling as the country was engulfed by extreme summer heatwaves and drought would look equally absurd defending the decision while standing knee-deep in winter floodwaters that are becoming ever more common and extreme.

For Labour, this is a moment of truth. One path follows the evidence, accelerates the transition and gives workers and investors confidence about Britain’s economic direction. The other offers a flimsy response to genuine public concern around bills and jobs and a symbolic concession to Donald Trump and the anti-net-zero right, while damaging trust among the voters Labour needs to keep.

I hope the government will choose the former, but right now I’m not betting on it.

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