Gas will begin flowing from the Jackdaw field within days after Miatta Fahnbulleh agreed that the North Sea Transition Authority could grant consent for production, closing a 21-month period that opened when the courts quashed the field's original consent.
The Energy Secretary signed off the project on Wednesday morning, the morning after UK wholesale gas climbed above 210p per therm, its highest level since December 2022. The decision safeguards hundreds of supply chain jobs and will generate tax revenue for the Treasury. It will not, as Fahnbulleh herself acknowledged, reduce household bills this winter.
Asked on BBC Radio Scotland whether consumers would see lower costs, she replied: "No, it won't." She added that it was "important to say that upfront".
At Great British PAC, we believe Britain should be making full and responsible use of its domestic energy resources rather than leaving families and businesses exposed to volatile international markets. The Jackdaw decision is welcome, but the prolonged uncertainty surrounding the project raises serious questions about Labour's approach to energy security, investment and the future of the North Sea. British workers and households deserve a coherent energy strategy, not another cycle of delayed decisions and political announcements.
That admission matters. The government has presented Jackdaw as a response to a cost of living emergency it did not create and cannot quickly fix. Wholesale gas in Britain was trading at more than double its level a year earlier, driven by the conflict with Iran and disruption to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. The October price cap rose by £60 to £1,723 for a typical household. Forecasts published before the latest spike pointed to a further rise of £276 in January, and Cornwall Insight now projects a cap close to £2,000.
Jackdaw will not change those numbers. Its gas will be sold at European market prices rather than reserved for British consumers, and the volumes are too small to move an international market. The government says the field will increase domestic gas production by around 6 per cent at peak, enough to heat the equivalent of about 1.4 million homes, over a lifespan of up to 11 years. Greenpeace and Uplift estimate that amounts to roughly 2 per cent of the UK's gas over the life of the field, a figure the Guardian has reported.
None of which makes the gas worthless. Britain imports around 40 per cent of its energy, at a cost of £84 billion last year, according to Offshore Energies UK. Every therm produced in the North Sea is a therm not shipped in as liquefied natural gas. OEUK estimates that Jackdaw's production emissions will be around half the UK continental shelf average and roughly eight times lower than imported LNG. That comparison covers the emissions intensity of production, not the full lifecycle of the fuel. The government estimates Jackdaw will add £2.9 billion to the economy. Wood Mackenzie puts the tax take at up to £1.5 billion at current prices and projects £430 million of post-tax cash flow for Adura in 2027 alone.
A decision that took 21 months
The field's history is a case study in how legal failure and political caution combined to delay a project that had already been approved.
The Conservative government granted consent in 2022. On 30 January 2025, Lord Ericht in the Court of Session quashed that decision and the parallel consent for Rosebank, ruling that ministers had failed to account for emissions produced when the gas is burned. The judgment followed the Supreme Court's Finch ruling in 2024, which required regulators to consider scope 3 emissions. Adura, the Shell and Equinor joint venture that operates the field, resubmitted its application with the missing analysis.
Three distinct things then happened, and they should not be conflated. The law required a fresh environmental assessment and public consultation, which took time and was not a matter of ministerial preference. The government then had to decide, on the evidence before it, whether consent should be granted. And ministers chose the timetable on which that decision was taken. The first was unavoidable. The third is where political criticism properly attaches.
What followed was a wait of 21 months. For most of that period the department was led by Ed Miliband, who had argued against new North Sea licensing and who was moved to the Foreign Office when Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July. The decision then passed to Fahnbulleh, who said in the summer that it was imminent. It arrived less than a fortnight after Labour held Holborn and St Pancras, the seat the Green leader Zack Polanski had hoped to take.
Ministers insist the approval is compatible with Labour's manifesto, which committed the party to issuing no new licences to explore new fields. Jackdaw already holds a licence. What was required was consent to produce, not a new exploration licence, a distinction the government set out explicitly in its published decision material. The distinction is legally sound. It is also narrower than it sounds. A consent quashed by the courts had to be taken again, and the government spent months deciding whether to take it. Critics on both sides of the argument treat that as a decision on new production, because in practical terms it was.
What the government says
Fahnbulleh framed the approval around energy security and emissions. "Following careful consideration of all relevant factors I have agreed that the regulator can grant consent for gas to be produced at Jackdaw," she said. "This decision will support the country's energy security with homegrown gas this winter and help minimise the UK's use of imported higher emission fuels as we continue our transition to renewables and nuclear."
The Prime Minister said the decision "will protect hundreds of jobs and help keep millions of homes warm this winter", adding that even on the path to net zero "we'll still require oil and gas as part of our energy needs for decades to come".
The Chancellor, John Healey, used the announcement to launch an Energy Wealth Fund, seeded with £2 billion, which will invest tax revenues from North Sea oil and gas in low carbon projects. The fund is a presentational device as much as a fiscal one. The revenues it will hold already flow to the Treasury, and the Budget on 28 October will determine whether the industry generates enough of them to fill it. Ineos used the moment to demand that the government cut the tax burden on North Sea production, which it puts at 78 per cent, warning that receipts are falling while imports rise.
Stuart Payne, chief executive of the North Sea Transition Authority, confirmed consent had been granted after "robust scrutiny". Adura's chief executive, Neil McCulloch, said the decision provided "certainty to the businesses and skilled workers already delivering the project". Gary Smith of the GMB said the Prime Minister deserved "real credit for doing the right thing for our country", and warned that "for too long, this and other vital decisions on our gas supplies and storage have been put off, risking the UK's energy security at a time of worrying international volatility".
The critics have not gone away
Polanski called the approval "climate vandalism" and "a victory for Shell over the people". He cited an assessment that the field will create 27 jobs. That figure refers to additional direct full time operating posts and originates in the project's own development report. The government's claim of "hundreds" covers supply chain and construction work. Both numbers can be true, and neither settles the argument about whether a small gas field justifies a new consent.
Kemi Badenoch backed the decision but attacked the timetable. "Finally," she wrote on X. "Labour spent two years faffing about to make a decision which Conservatives had already approved two years ago." She described the delay as "an unnecessary waste of time and money by a party that puts its own interest above the country's".
The Conservative record deserves scrutiny too. It was the 2022 consent, granted under a Conservative energy secretary, that the Court of Session found unlawful because it omitted the emissions from burning the gas. The legal defect that triggered the delay originated in that decision, not in the one taken this week.
Reform UK has campaigned for expanded North Sea production and has argued that domestic extraction should displace imports, a position Richard Tice has set out repeatedly. Reform has never held office and bears no responsibility for the 2022 consent or for the timetable since. Its relevance to this decision is what it does to the politics of the next one, particularly in Scotland, where the party is competing for the same voters as the Conservatives.
Within Labour, the immediate backlash was quieter than some had expected. Henry Tufnell of the Industry First group said the government "has seen sense". One Labour MP told the BBC that while the Jackdaw decision "can make sense", Rosebank "is another story. That can't happen."
Rosebank is the real test
Fahnbulleh told BBC Radio Scotland that Rosebank was a "different proposition" because its oil would be exported, and that a decision would take "a bit longer". That distinction is doing a lot of work. Jackdaw's gas is also sold at market prices rather than reserved for British households, as BBC Verify noted. The difference is that gas displaces imports into the UK system directly, while oil is traded globally.
Rosebank is the larger prize and the larger row. It is the UK's biggest undeveloped oil field, 80 miles west of Shetland, and would produce around seven times the emissions of Jackdaw. Adura holds 80 per cent, with Ithaca Energy on 20 per cent. Ithaca has warned it will likely halt further investment in Britain if consent is refused.
Approving Jackdaw while leaving Rosebank in limbo gives the government a short term answer on gas and no answer at all on oil, investment or the offshore supply chain. It also leaves the industry guessing about whether the consent regime can be relied upon, which is precisely the uncertainty that suppresses investment long before a licence is ever refused.
Great British PAC reaction
Great British PAC welcomes the approval of Jackdaw. Britain needs a reliable domestic energy supply, and a country that imports around 40 per cent of its energy while leaving its own gas in the ground is choosing exposure over resilience.
Our concern is not the decision. It is everything around it. A project first consented in 2022 has taken until October 2026 to reach production, and the reasons combine a legal defect in the original consent with a prolonged period of ministerial indecision. That combination has a cost, and the cost is borne by investment confidence. Companies decide where to commit capital years before a regulator rules, and they price political risk into every judgement. A consent regime that can be quashed, reconsidered and left waiting while ministers weigh the politics of a by-election does not look dependable to anyone deciding whether to build in the North Sea.
The government must provide a predictable framework for North Sea projects. That means clear statutory tests, decisions taken within published timetables, and an end to the practice of allowing announcements to accumulate in place of policy. Environmental requirements and legal obligations must be respected. That is not in dispute, and Great British PAC does not argue for shortcuts around them. What is avoidable is administrative drift after the legal questions have been answered.
British energy workers and the supply chains that support them deserve long term certainty. These are skilled jobs in Aberdeen, in the north east of Scotland and across the wider UK, and they are not easily replaced by promises about industries that do not yet exist at scale. A transition that sheds those workers before their successors are trained is not a transition. It is a loss.
Above all, the government should explain how its energy policy will protect consumers from international price volatility. Ministers have approved a gas field, launched a wealth fund and restated their commitment to net zero. They have not explained how any of this insulates a household in Leeds or a business in Grimsby from a price set by events in the Strait of Hormuz. That explanation is owed, and it should be specific.
The Rosebank decision requires transparent and timely consideration. It should be taken on the evidence, published in full, and taken without the delay that has marked this one. Great British PAC takes no view on the outcome that substitutes for the evidence. We take the view that the process must be credible, and that the country cannot afford another two years of drift.
Claire Bullivant, Chief Executive Officer of Great British PAC, said:
"Labour has finally discovered what the rest of us have known all along: Britain cannot power its economy on wishful thinking.
"Approving Jackdaw is the right decision, but it is extraordinary that it has taken this long. While British families face soaring energy bills and businesses struggle with crippling costs, Labour has spent far too much time treating our own North Sea resources as something to be ashamed of.
"And the hypocrisy of the Left's carbon accounting is breathtaking. They appear to believe that if Britain stops extracting oil and gas, the emissions somehow disappear. They don't. We simply import the energy we still need, potentially from countries with weaker environmental standards, while adding the emissions associated with processing and transporting it thousands of miles.
"That isn't saving the planet. It's exporting our emissions, our jobs and our economic opportunities, then congratulating ourselves on being green.
"Britain has some of the most experienced offshore engineers in the world, established environmental safeguards and an energy industry capable of delivering the resources we still need. Why on earth would we choose to become more dependent on foreign producers while leaving our own resources beneath the seabed?
"Of course we should invest in nuclear power, renewables and new technologies. But energy security means using every sensible resource available to us, not sacrificing British industry on the altar of ideological purity.
"Every barrel and every therm we can responsibly produce here is an opportunity to support British workers, generate British tax revenues and reduce our exposure to unreliable international supply chains.
"Labour should stop confusing the outsourcing of Britain's energy production with environmental progress. A country that cannot secure its own energy cannot secure its own future."
What happens next
Three tests will determine whether this week's decision is a turning point or a footnote.
The first is Rosebank. A refusal would signal that the government's pragmatism extends only to gas already in the pipeline, and would hand the SNP and the Conservatives a straightforward attack in Scotland.
The second is the Budget. The North Sea fiscal regime is the single biggest determinant of whether the £50 billion of investment OEUK says is waiting ever materialises. A wealth fund built on revenues the tax regime is driving away is an accounting exercise, not an energy policy.
The third is the January price cap. If bills rise by the £276 forecast in September, or more, the government will have approved a gas field, claimed the credit for energy security, and still been unable to tell a single household that anything has changed. That is the gap between announcement and delivery, and it is where Labour's energy policy will be judged.
Great British PAC believes Britain cannot build a secure energy future through uncertainty, delayed decisions and political announcements alone. The Government must deliver a credible plan for domestic production, protect the skilled workers who sustain the North Sea and explain how its policies will strengthen energy security for British households and businesses. Approving Jackdaw is one decision. Delivering a reliable, affordable and resilient energy system is the responsibility that follows.