The UK cannot afford to reject Rosebank and Jackdaw
The public consultations on the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields have now closed. Jackdaw closed on 10 August and Rosebank on 17 August. Both projects remain under review, leaving the final decision with the UK Government.
From Westminster, these may appear to be two individual regulatory decisions. From the North-east of Scotland, they look very different.
I live and work here. I have spent much of my career working around complex energy and infrastructure programmes. I know that decisions of this scale never stop at the boundary of a project. They flow through supply chains, order books, investment committees, recruitment plans, apprenticeships, household spending and the confidence businesses have to remain in a region. That is why I believe rejecting Jackdaw and Rosebank would be one of the most financially self-destructive decisions the UK could make.
A country approaching £3 trillion of debt cannot casually reject investment
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics on Friday showed that UK public sector net debt had reached £2,984.9 billion at the end of July, £95.9 billion more than a year earlier and equivalent to 94.1% of GDP.
The UK borrowed £1.8 billion in July, £2.3 billion more than the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast. Borrowing during the first four months of the financial year reached £56.7 billion, also £2.3 billion above forecast. Those figures are creating further pressure on the Treasury ahead of the next Budget.
Jackdaw and Rosebank will not solve Britain’s national-debt problem. Nobody credible should pretend that they will. But a government facing debt of almost £3 trillion should not deliberately reject advanced private investment, surrender future tax revenues, increase exposure to imported energy and damage one of the country’s most valuable industrial supply chains.
According to Adura, the operator, Jackdaw and Rosebank represent combined anticipated investment of £10.8 billion, with more than three-quarters expected to be spent in the UK. More than £3 billion has already been invested. Adura estimates that the projects could generate £28.7 billion of economic activity across their producing lives, including £9.1 billion through the supply chain. It projects £1.4 billion in tax revenues before the expected end of this Parliament and £3.8 billion by 2034.
These are operator projections and will depend on production, prices, profitability and the fiscal regime. They should therefore be examined properly, but they cannot simply be dismissed.
When the Treasury is struggling to contain borrowing, intentionally removing productive activity and future tax receipts is not fiscal responsibility. It is economic self-sabotage.
The impact would be felt first in the North-East of Scotland but it would not remain here
The North-East of Scotland still hosts approximately one-third of the UK’s offshore oil and gas workforce. Research published by Robert Gordon University this year found that around 90% of the region’s offshore energy workforce remains employed in oil and gas. That is the reality of the transition as it exists today, not as we might wish it already existed.
Renewables, hydrogen, carbon capture and other emerging industries are essential to the region’s future. But they are not yet creating sufficient work, at sufficient scale and speed, to replace every declining oil and gas role. The transition therefore needs a bridge.
Jackdaw and Rosebank would support more than 3,500 jobs at peak construction, approximately 880 jobs throughout production and 125 apprenticeships, according to Adura. The company reports that 198 supplier contracts have already been placed, including 171 with UK-registered businesses. Those suppliers include engineering companies, manufacturers, fabricators, ports, vessel operators, logistics providers and specialist consultancies. Many are based across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Shetland, Fife, the Highlands and North-East England.
If these projects are rejected, the consequences will not be limited to one operator’s balance sheet. Suppliers will lose expected work. Investment in people, equipment and facilities will be reconsidered. Experienced workers will follow secure employment elsewhere. Smaller companies will have less financial capacity to diversify. Skills that the UK expects to use in offshore wind, carbon capture, hydrogen, nuclear and defence will be weakened or exported. Once that capability has gone, it cannot be recreated when the next policy announcement requires it.
A managed transition uses the strength of the existing industry to build what comes next. It does not remove the current economic foundation before the replacement is ready.
Importing energy does not make the UK more responsible
The UK will continue to consume oil and gas during the transition, regardless of whether Jackdaw and Rosebank are approved. Rejecting domestic production does not automatically eliminate that demand. It changes where the energy comes from, where the investment is made, where the workers are employed and which government receives the associated tax.
Jackdaw presents the clearest direct energy-security case. Its platform is already installed and connected through existing infrastructure to the Shearwater hub and St Fergus in Aberdeenshire. Adura estimates that Jackdaw could provide more than 6% of UK gas production, enough gas for approximately 1.4 million homes.
Rosebank’s oil presents a different case. North Sea crude is traded internationally, and the Government acknowledges that 80–90% of UK refinery inputs are already imported because many domestic crudes are not ideally suited to British refineries. Approval of Rosebank should therefore not be sold as a direct route to cheaper petrol. Its economic case rests on the investment, employment, exports, supply-chain activity, tax receipts and industrial capability it can retain in the UK, while contributing to the security of the wider European market.
Energy security is not only about where an individual barrel is refined. It is also about productive capacity, trade, infrastructure, skills and the ability of the UK and its allies to withstand disruption.
Environmental scrutiny matters but scrutiny does not require automatic refusal
The previous consents for Jackdaw and Rosebank were quashed because their environmental assessments had not considered the downstream emissions produced when the oil and gas were ultimately used. The Court of Session was right to require the decisions to be taken lawfully. Scope 3 emissions must be assessed transparently and seriously. But considering those emissions does not mean that refusal is the only lawful or rational conclusion.
The Government must consider the full consequences of its decision: emissions, energy demand, alternative sources, economic activity, employment, imports, tax receipts, regional resilience and the practical pathway through the transition.
The UK must reduce its consumption of fossil fuels. That requires faster renewable deployment, greater energy efficiency, electrification, storage, nuclear generation, carbon capture and serious investment in the infrastructure needed to support them. Rejecting domestic production while demand continues does not deliver that transformation. It risks replacing British production with foreign production while exporting jobs, investment and tax revenues.
That is not decarbonisation. It is displacement.
Why I call rejection financial suicide
I do not use that expression lightly. Two projects cannot repair the national finances. But the thinking that would reject them reveals a much larger problem.
A country approaching £3 trillion of debt cannot afford to:
- turn away £10.8 billion of advanced private investment;
- jeopardise more than £3 billion already committed;
- surrender billions of pounds in potential tax receipts;
- weaken a nationally important industrial supply chain;
- increase its dependence on imported energy;
- undermine the workforce needed to deliver the energy transition; and
- send another warning to international investors that UK projects can become stranded after capital has been committed.
That combination is financially indefensible.
Approval should not be a blank cheque. The Government should impose clear environmental requirements, secure meaningful UK supply-chain participation, protect apprenticeships and skills, demand transparent delivery commitments and hold the operators accountable for the benefits they have projected. But the projects should be approved promptly, lawfully and with proper controls.
The UK needs growth. The Treasury needs productive investment and sustainable tax receipts. The North-East of Scotland needs a managed transition that retains its people and industrial capability. The wider country needs secure energy while the replacement system is built.
We cannot achieve any of those things by dismantling what we already have before what comes next is capable of carrying the load. That is not transition. It is abandonment. And the UK can no longer afford it.