Jackdaw North Sea gasfield wins go-ahead as Burnham backs industry

The Jackdaw gasfield will be given the go-ahead on Wednesday, signalling Andy Burnham’s commitment to the North Sea fossil fuel industry and handing a clear win to Shell and Equinor after more than a year of delay.

Miatta Fahnbulleh and John Healey, the energy secretary and chancellor, will make the announcement from Aberdeen on Wednesday morning. Multiple sources have told The Guardian that Fahnbulleh has decided not to block the field, allowing the North Sea Transition Authority to grant approval on financial and logistical grounds. Stuart Payne, the NSTA’s chief executive, will stand with them.

When fully operational, Jackdaw will account for 6% of North Sea gas production and rank among the biggest undeveloped fields still left in a declining basin. Ministers will insist the environmental approval does not break Labour’s manifesto line against new licences, because this is not a new licence.

The Conservative government first approved the field in 2022, arguing it would help shield the UK from energy-market shocks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Labour took office in 2024 promising no new North Sea licences and did not expect to face live decisions on Jackdaw or Rosebank. Both projects were then thrown into doubt by a landmark court ruling that regulators should have counted the carbon from burning the oil and gas when testing climate commitments. Shell and Equinor resubmitted their environmental application last September. Fahnbulleh and her predecessor, Ed miliband, spent months weighing whether to use ministerial power to stop it.

Britain needs secure supply and paid work in the basins it already has. Families facing high bills cannot be told to wait while perfectly good reserves sit idle for the comfort of campaign groups. A country that wants to run itself keeps the lights on and the skills at home.

Donald Trump pressed both Burnham and Keir Starmer to “open up the North Sea”. Burnham answered with a pragmatic line earlier this summer: “There is a resource there. When people are struggling – you can’t ignore that.” He told the Commons last week he would take a pragmatic approach on oil and gas and set out decisions shortly.

Campaign anger and the Rosebank test

Climate groups are furious. Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, put it bluntly: “Jackdaw will provide around just 2% of our gas demand for roughly 10 years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the overall decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely. Labour’s climate credibility is on the line. No new oil and gasfields are compatible with safe climate limits.” She called Rosebank the defining test and urged Burnham to reject it.

A Savanta poll for E3G, seen by the paper, found nearly a third of voters would be less likely to back Labour if more North Sea drilling goes ahead, including almost a third of those who voted Labour last time and around half of 18-to-24-year-olds. Ellie Mae O’Hagan of E3G argued the public wants heat pumps and solar, not tax breaks for oil and gas. Officials still say Rosebank is the harder call: it would produce around seven times the CO2 and most of its oil would be exported. Fahnbulleh has not made a final call on that larger field; officials are examining whether tax proceeds could be steered to green projects. A decision is expected later in the year.

Wednesday’s Jackdaw move may steady Labour in north-east Scotland, where the industry and unions have pushed hard for the permits. It will unsettle some Labour MPs in seats watched by the Green party. The immediate fact remains simple: one of the North Sea’s biggest waiting gasfields is cleared to proceed, operators get certainty, and the argument now turns to Rosebank.

Original source: The Guardian