Approving Jackdaw is the right call

The Government’s decision to approve the Jackdaw gas field is undoubtedly the right one. It strengthens our energy security and will support many skilled workers in Aberdeen whose livelihoods depend on the North Sea. So accustomed have we become to vital industries being destroyed by green ideology, that even this barest of minimums is truly worth celebrating.

The project, beset by legal challenges, can finally enter production, bringing much-needed domestic gas into our energy system. Jackdaw is expected to supply around 6 per cent of British gas production at its peak and contribute an estimated £2.9 billion to the economy; driving local investment in the Northeast of Scotland and protecting established supply chains.

The importance to our energy security is greater than many recognise. On Thursday, it was revealed that Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem was making emergency plans to secure additional supplies of pipeline gas from Europe this winter. We are facing “negative supply margin”, meaning that a one-in-twenty-year cold day could lead to a supply shortfall. Such an event has never happened before, but has become more likely as our domestic gas supplies from the North Sea have fallen. In a worst-case scenario, it could mean factories having to shut down and homes being disconnected from the gas grid.

Beyond its economic and strategic benefits, Jackdaw’s approval could mark an even more significant turning point. In defending it, the Prime Minister has been making an argument that we sceptics of Net Zero have been making for many years. Namely, that it makes no sense at to import hydrocarbons from abroad rather than use our own. Not for the environment, and certainly not for the economy. Labour had spent much of the last decade, lest we forget, preaching the importance of keeping it in the ground.

We should take nothing for granted. It is important to understand what has and has not changed. Labour has not formally abandoned its policy of refusing new oil and gas exploration licences. Jackdaw is an existing licensed field, approved under the previous Conservative Government, whose subsequent legal difficulties prevented it from progressing.

There is the potential here for the Government to embrace a newfound energy realism

The decision is therefore consistent with Labour’s existing policy. Yet it could be so much more than that: there is the potential here for the Government to embrace a newfound energy realism, a pragmatism that can help the country move on from the miserabilism of Net Zero.

For too long, so-called environmentalists have become erroneously fixated with the supply side of the emissions equation, insisting that oil companies simply extract oil for the hell of it and that people will pay them just to burn it. Possibly whilst doing an evil laugh. Were they to move on from these gross simplifications, they could embrace a far more productive approach to decarbonisation that recognises that if there are cheaper and better alternatives to fossil fuels, people will use them.

We are being asked to believe that, on the one hand, these projects will not bring down international fossil fuel prices but, on the other, that they will somehow stimulate greater international demand for fossil fuels. It doesn’t add up.

The legal troubles that the Jackdaw project has faced reflect the contortions of the modern environmental movement. Even though we have legislation that governs our emissions — the Climate Change Act — the legal challenge to Jackdaw was brought under Environmental Impact Assessment regulations. It was decided that their environmental impact assessment ought to have considered what are known as “Scope 3” emissions; that is to say, downstream emissions from burning the fossil fuels themselves, either here in Britain or overseas.

Beyond the Climate Change Act, which explicitly only covers territorial emissions, it is entirely discretionary what this “consideration” entails. Years and millions of pounds on legal fees have been wasted, only to let ministerial whim once again dictate the fate of many livelihoods. This is not the rules-based system espoused by sincere liberals. It is a corrupt system that allows powerful green vested interests to destroy industries they don’t like.

Which is why it was so encouraging to hear the Conservatives’ pledge at their conference to withdraw Britain from the Aarhus Convention; the treaty makes it incredibly easy to bring judicial reviews against infrastructure and energy projects, by capping costs to claimants. Leaving it will help protect future planning applications from such needless and expensive delays.

The Labour government, having accepted the argument for domestic oil and gas extraction, and having a younger voting base tired of economic stagnation, are in a prime position to embrace the abundance mindset that will be so important to our country’s future success. If only they have the courage of conviction to see off the extremist Net Zero advocates in their midst.

This won’t be easy. Net Zero has become akin to state ideology in modern Britain and it remains on the statute book. The next test will be making a decision on the larger Rosebank oil play. Here the mood music is not so encouraging, and there is a significant risk that the Government will argue that as an oil-producing field it is not as critical to our energy security as a gas field and block its approval.

But I remain optimistic for the future. A recent opinion poll showed that a majority of even left-wing voters now back issuing new licenses for oil and gas developments in the North Sea. Among the country at large, this is supported by a margin of 52% to 24%.  The Government’s policies will have to reflect this new political reality.