It’s time to end the false choice between net zero and North Sea oil
Published 24th Oct 2026, 05:00 BST
Anonymous briefings are the poison pen letters of politics. The content is invariably of less interest than the briefer’s s identity which becomes the subject of speculation and suspicion.
Somebody was very busy on the briefing front following the announcement that the Jackdaw gas project in the North Sea will go ahead. The urgent mission was to spread word that similar consent for the Rosebank oil field is already doomed. It would be interesting to know the “who” behind that briefing.
I doubt if it was the work of informed “sources close to” the Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, and certainly hope not. The decision on Rosebank is supposed to be quasi-judicial and beyond mere politics. That would not sit comfortably with what seemed like a crude attempt at influencing.
A more plausible theory is that it came from disgruntled “sources close to” Ms Fahnbulleh’s predecessor, Ed Milliband, in a rearguard action to protect his veto upon North Sea developments, which he hung round Labour’s neck in advance of the last General Election and has looked increasingly irrational ever since.
Either way, it is an exercise in ground-laying that needs to be repelled. However presented, an outcome which approves Jackdaw and refuses Rosebank would look like a crude political fix rather than one in which legal or scientific factors had been the actual determinants. It would impress nobody.
Instead, the opportunity exists for a long overdue re-set to the terms of this debate. Andy Burnham’s government can, at one and the same time, reaffirm its net zero commitments, to be delivered with optimum speed and efficiency, while exercising self-interested common sense about the North Sea.
Repeat after me: the two are not mutually incompatible, as the extremes pretend. On the contrary, they can be two sides of the same coin, to the great benefit of employment, revenues available for beneficial energy-related use and the environment. As ever, the enemy of a balanced energy policy is single issue zealotry.
The logic of approving Jackdaw is also to approve Rosebank. This can be presented – as it should have been all along – as entirely consistent with transition to a clean energy future, rather than its arch-enemy. Andy Burnham should seize the moment to confront the false dichotomy.
He has already done so, with political skill, by making a link between consenting Jackdaw and committing to use the revenues to help fund renewables infrastructure and cut energy bills. There is no intrinsic link between domestic production and these outcomes but by effectively undertaking to ring-fence the money, Burnham has created one.
Exactly the same can be done in relation to the billions which will flow from Rosebank and, potentially, other North Sea developments. That link between decisions and outcomes is crucial to winning public support.
Suddenly, once Jackdaw was approved, the briefers were anxious to dismiss it as low-hanging fruit while Rosebank would be the real test of the government’s environmental credentials. That too is a false distinction based on the premise that either project is, by definition, environmentally irresponsible in relative terms. And it is relative terms that matter.
The UK’s need for oil and gas for decades to come is not in dispute. The only question is where they will come from and what compensatory advantages will be secured for our domestic economy, as well as the environment. There is not a shred of evidence that imports are less environmentally damaging than North Sea production; in fact, quite the opposite.
Andy Burnham spoke sensibly in the House of Commons about the role of “pragmatism” in making these decisions. He should now follow that through. It is not possible to be half-pragmatic and the same basic logic applies to Rosebank as to Jackdaw – i.e. the wisdom of maintaining domestic production as opposed to increased reliance on imports.
The distinction which opponents then seek to draw is that oil is globally traded while most of the Jackdaw gas will come straight into the UK. However, that is outweighed by the fact that the UK would be a beneficiary of higher oil prices as well as a victim, through revenues to the Treasury. We would also be less of a “net” importer.
Underpinning all this are security of supply imperatives. At this point I am bound to hark back 20 -odd years to days when the same kind of people who now oppose North Sea developments were obsessed with killing off the civil nuclear industry without regard for wider consequences.
In order to rationalise that position, the Labour government of the day produced an Energy White Paper which accepted that by 2020, the UK would be 80 per cent dependent on imports for gas, with 80 per cent of them coming from Russia. It was a bonkers strategy and mercifully it never materialised, but it illustrates where single issue thinking leads.
At present, the single issue objective is to close down the North Sea as quickly as possible, regardless of implications. Those who oppose that are cast as displaying reckless disregard for climate change and its effects. That is neither logical nor true, except in the Trumpian world of denial.
When it comes to the fundamental question of “imports versus domestic production”, there appears to be quite a wide political consensus within the major parties, so why not draw on it? It is only on the noisy but unrepresentative fringes that the preference is for maximisation of imports for as long as we need oil and gas.
Meanwhile, the last man in Scotland who can’t decide whether approving Jackdaw was the right thing to do is, rather sadly, also the First Minister. We can only assume that, on Rosebank, his same indecision will be final – just wait for what happens and then attack it.