On 21 October, we learned that the Jackdaw gasfield had been approved by the UK government. The arguments put forward in favour of Jackdaw span job creation, energy security, the fact that the UK is still largely reliant on gas, and the idea that ‘homegrown’ gas (how I hate that euphemism) is better than imported gas.
The approval was widely anticipated, and came as no surprise to me. Despite this, I still felt profound dismay at the announcement, which amplified my ever-increasing sense of horror at both the UK government’s and international leaders’ lethargy and short-sightedness when it comes to climate.
Having fully embraced Yvon Chouinard’s belief that “the cure for depression is action.", I made use of ClientEarth’s initiative to submit a pre-written email to my local MP, Conservative MP for East Hampshire Damian Hinds. Within 30 minutes, I received a response acknowledging the environmental concerns but setting out his support for further North Sea extraction.
His argument was that Britain should make use of its own resources while neighbouring countries such as Norway continued to extract theirs. He warned that the government’s policy on new licences was “putting 200,000 jobs at risk”, and that failing to approve Rosebank would threaten investment and harm the economy.
He also argued that a strong economy was needed to finance the energy transition, that Britain would continue to need significant quantities of oil and gas for many years to come, and that replacing domestic production with imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) would increase emissions from production and transport. He described this as a “false environmental economy”.
I acknowledge this is a thoughtful response. I also acknowledge that many others, including renewables proponents like the CEO of Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson, are of the opinion that the decision to approve Jackdaw was the right one in the shorter term (but to be clear, I do not mean to equate Greg Jackson’s longer-term stance with that of Hind’s). There is a school of thought which argues that approving Jackdaw was the pragmatic decision: the UK is still massively dependent on fossil fuels, and it’s better to make use of local resources rather than imports.
I can acknowledge the thoughtfulness of this stance, but I still believe it is inaccurate, and inadequate in addressing the climate emergency. Damian Hinds’s email has provided me with the perfect vehicle to challenge this particular line of thinking.
1. On the idea that the UK should not allow its resources to go untapped whilst neighbours like Norway extract resources “from the same seabed”: I am always mystified when Conservative MPs put Norway forward as an example of how powerful natural resource extraction can be, without also discussing what Norway did with the revenue generated.
When the Ekofisk oilfield was discovered in 1969, Norway embarked on an approach to resource management that placed strong emphasis on public control and public benefit for the long-term. Its sovereign wealth fund, built using revenues from Norway’s oil and gas resources, was established in 1990. Compare this with the UK, where successive governments used North Sea revenues to meet immediate fiscal needs without establishing an equivalent sovereign wealth fund. Thatcher’s governments also privatised energy businesses, including Britoil, and sold further state holdings in BP (although admittedly BP share sales had begun earlier under Labour in 1977).
The UK still collected substantial revenues from North Sea extraction, reaching £12 billion in 1984–85. My objection is to the short-termism of failing to preserve more of that finite wealth for the future. Saving it would, of course, have required higher taxes, lower spending or more borrowing elsewhere. But that is precisely the point: governments made choices about what to prioritise!
Mr Hinds’s argument that a strong economy is needed to fund the transition away from fossil fuels is absolutely true. Had successive governments made the decision to preserve more of the proceeds of the UK’s energy reserves for the long-term benefit of the British people, we could arguably be in a stronger position to finance that transition now.
The government has, in fairness, announced a £2 billion Energy Wealth Fund alongside Jackdaw’s approval, intended to invest oil and gas revenues in the energy transition. The principle is good, but it’s hard not to believe that this horse has already bolted.
None of this, by itself, settles whether Jackdaw should be approved. But anyone in the UK who invokes the Norway example must also acknowledge its stewardship of resource wealth for the benefit of Norwegians.
2. On the figure of 200,000 jobs being placed at risk by the government’s policies on North Sea extraction: I believe the way this figure has been presented needs much closer scrutiny.
Here, Hinds is referencing wider North Sea policy, rather than explicitly claiming that 200,000 jobs depend on Jackdaw and Rosebank alone. The figure describes employment supported by the UK oil and gas industry as a whole, including supply-chain jobs and employment sustained by workers’ spending. That is not evidence that all those jobs would disappear under the policy he opposes.
Jackdaw is expected to support nearly 500 jobs annually, including direct, indirect and induced employment. That includes 273 existing Shearwater jobs and 27 new direct full-time-equivalent roles. On Jackdaw employment peaked at more than 1,400 during development. Rosebank is forecast to support around 2,000 UK jobs at peak construction and an average of 525 UK full-time jobs over the field’s lifetime, again including direct, indirect and induced employment. It’s also important to acknowledge that I have encountered significantly lower job creation estimates via industry conversations.
It’s also worth considering the employment opportunities created by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The government estimates that the Warm Homes Plan could support up to 180,000 additional jobs across the UK in energy efficiency and clean heating by 2030.
These are different forecasts, covering different periods of time, and we cannot pretend a job created elsewhere in the country automatically replaces one lost in a North Sea community. A just transition must include opportunity generation for the people affected by that transition. But protecting livelihoods and prolonging extraction are not synonymous. North Sea communities will also be exposed to the impacts of climate change, and they deserve a future that extends beyond the limited lifetimes of oil and gas fields.
3. On the idea that not approving North Sea extraction is damaging to the economy: I think we need to take a considerably wider view of what constitutes economic damage.
Without additional adaptation, climate change-related damage could cost the UK economy the equivalent of £60–£260 billion per year by 2050 (expressed in 2025 costs), under scenarios involving ~2°C of global warming. Compare this with the estimated lifetime economic contributions of Jackdaw and Rosebank, which are forecast to deliver approximately £27 billion combined. These are estimates of gross value added, not company revenues or tax generated. To be clear, this is a comparison of scale, not a cost-benefit calculation. I also acknowledge that rejection of these two fields would not prevent all of these potential climate costs, which would be the product of global emissions accumulated over time.
But the scale matters. We are discussing the economic benefits of further extraction whilst facing climate risks on a vastly greater scale. Any claim to economic pragmatism needs to confront the additional emissions, the implications for future investment, and the risks of prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels. Listing the benefits of extraction is only a small part of a much, much larger story.
4. And finally, on the claim that the UK will still need significant quantities of oil and gas in the coming decades: let’s be clear, the quantity we need, how long we need it for, and how quickly that need declines are profoundly shaped by policy decisions. Presenting our addiction to fossil fuels as an intractable feature of reality is inaccurate and disingenuous.
Decarbonising existing buildings, vehicles, and industrial equipment will take time, money, and vast infrastructure development. Even the Climate Change Committee’s ambitious pathway retains a limited role for fossil fuels in 2050. But acknowledging that we will need some oil and gas during the transition does not automatically justify approving these particular developments, nor does it make a universal case for further extraction at scale.
Hinds’s point about imported LNG deserves acknowledgement too. A North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) analysis, using 2024 data, estimates that imported LNG produces on average about three times the emissions of UK-produced gas before combustion. Hinds is clear in his reference to these pre-combustion stages of production, rather than the emissions from burning it. There is, admittedly, a genuine advantage here.
But imported gas is not all LNG, and much arrives by pipeline from Norway, whose gas has lower average production emissions than the UK’s. And burning gas still releases carbon dioxide; the climate could not care less where it comes from. Jackdaw’s advantage over LNG does not settle the question of how quickly we should be reducing gas demand.
Our domestic and global addiction to fossil fuels could be reduced on a greatly accelerated timeframe with concerted effort. I’ll quote Ed Miliband here, speaking in 2019: we need “an absolute wartime mobilisation” to tackle the climate emergency. Such a mobilisation would require compromises and sacrifices. It would not be easy. But the alternatives are too dreadful to contemplate.
Ultimately, I believe that what we are seeing in Labour’s approval of Jackdaw, the opposition’s calls for even more North Sea extraction, and the insistence that continued investment in fossil fuels is necessary, is the masking of myopia with pragmatism.
If we wanted to be truly practical, we would be throwing absolutely everything we’ve got at reducing emissions and preparing for the climate damage we can no longer avoid. Insulation, heat pumps, clean power, storage and electricity networks would be treated with the same urgency that we encounter when another large extraction project is awaiting approval. Instead, governments insist on kicking the can down the road, whilst big oil continues to reap the rewards of our addiction.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is very likely to weaken this century, and a collapse is possible in the longer-term, the consequences of which would be severe. The Amazon faces a growing risk of catastrophic ecosystem collapse as warming, drought, deforestation and fire compound. The point is, the Earth does not care about any human conception of pragmatism. It is subject to physics, and the science is clear about the need to reduce emissions. Any political or economic arguments which fail to recognise the science are far from pragmatic.
References
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and HM Treasury (21 October 2026). Jackdaw gas field gets green light. Approval, licence distinction, Jackdaw economic contribution and Energy Wealth Fund.
Patagonia Works (6 February 2018). Patagonia Gives Customers a Way to Fight for the Planet. Original source for Chouinard’s quoted remark.
AFP (21 October 2026). UK approves drilling in controversial Jackdaw gas field. Greg Jackson’s response.
Norges Bank Investment Management. The history. Ekofisk discovery and the establishment and funding of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
House of Commons Library (2014). Privatisation. Chronology of BP share sales and Britoil privatisation.
Office for Budget Responsibility (2023). The evolution of North Sea oil and gas receipts. Historical tax receipts.
Offshore Energies UK. Our industry manifesto. Sector-wide employment estimate and explanation of direct, indirect and induced jobs.
Adura (June 2026). Jackdaw: responses to the Regulation 12(1) notice. Employment estimates: printed pages 77 and 88, items 16 and 19.
Rosebank developer submission (2025). Other Secretary of State considerations: good, long-term jobs. Section 3: UK construction and lifetime employment, including direct, indirect and induced jobs.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2026). Warm Homes Plan. Chapter 6: projected employment growth. See also the parliamentary answer of 17 June 2026.
Climate Change Committee (2026). A Well-Adapted UK. Chapter 2: annual climate-damage estimates, warming scenarios and adaptation assumptions.
Adura (17 August 2026). Milestone for Rosebank as public consultation closes. Rosebank lifetime GVA and combined tax-revenue forecasts; these are developer estimates.
North Sea Transition Authority (September 2025). 2024 Emissions intensity of producing natural gas. Comparison of UK-produced gas, imported LNG and pipeline gas, excluding final combustion emissions.
Climate Change Committee (2025). The Seventh Carbon Budget. Chapter 10: energy-system transformation, residual fossil-fuel use and demand reduction.
The Guardian (23 September 2019). Ed Miliband calls for ‘wartime’ mobilisation to tackle climate crisis.
Met Office. What is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation?. See also Climate change: AMOC likely to withstand future warming (26 February 2025). Weakening projections and uncertainty over collapse.
Flores, B. M., et al. (2024). Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system. Nature, 626, 555–564. Research on interacting stresses and potential ecosystem transitions.
Primary correspondence: Damian Hinds MP, email to the author following Jackdaw’s approval. Position summarised and short extracts quoted from correspondence supplied by the author; no public link.
Times Radio (23 October 2026). Jackdaw Is Necessary For Now But Britain Needs To Get Off Gas | Octopus Energy. YouTube video. Interview with Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy.