Following years of uncertainty, this month marks the closure of the public consultations on drilling consent for the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields. The final decision on their development now rests with the UK Government and its new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.

Climate and environmental breakdown pose the single biggest threat to our collective future - and there is a limited window of opportunity to create a managed transition for workers and communities. Despite this, the past two years have seen a retrenchment of position on climate change and climate policy across much of the political spectrum. According to news reports, Burnham is leaning towards granting consent for the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields.

While it’s ironic to see this debate pick up during the hottest summer on record with widespread droughts and wildfires at large, Burnham does recognise the scale of the climate emergency (although he has been slow to name it). If he grants consent for Jackdaw and Rosebank it will therefore be in spite of this; framed instead around an effort to protect jobs and a declining industry in the North East of Scotland.

However, our analysis suggests that neither the economic nor climate case for Jackdaw and Rosebank holds up. Drawing from our recent report, Delivering A Just Transition for Fossil Fuel Workers, this blog highlights four reasons why sustained economic prosperity and energy security will only come from a fully-focused acceleration of the green transition. 

North Sea oil and gas production has fallen by three-quarters since its 1999 peak, driven by the natural depletion of North Sea oil fields, not climate policy. The North Sea is a mature basin, and there haven't been new discoveries large enough to replace the oil fields we’ve already used up. The previous UK Government granted hundreds of new licences between 2010 and 2024, but even these have barely moved the needle – producing just 36 days' worth of gas and 64 days' worth of oil in total so far. 

Official projections point to further decline in production over the coming decades. Crucially, potential production from new fields would only make a marginal contribution. Production from unlicensed and unexplored fields between now and 2050 would add only around two years of production at current levels, which means that North Sea production will keep falling regardless of any new licenses issued.

A long-term view of the North Sea shows that, driven by the geological and economic reality of the basin, the UK’s move away from oil and gas is well underway. The positive side of this is that we are less reliant on the North Sea for economic prosperity. Today, oil and gas revenue makes up just 0.5% of UK public revenue, a negligible contribution even in recent years of high energy prices. While Jackdaw and Rosebank would bring some additional revenue, this would amount to a rounding error in the context of the overall budget and have minimal impact on the state of overall public finances.

However, the impact of the North Sea’s decline has already been felt by the oil and gas workforce and the communities they support for some time. Our analysis finds that employment in Scotland’s oil and gas industry and its supply chain has fallen by over a quarter since 2014.

The workforce faces further decline over the coming decades, with Robert Gordon University projecting 400 job losses every two weeks from now through to 2030. The employment contribution from Jackdaw and Rosebank would be small relative to this broader structural transition. Because of the maturing basin, the truth is that there is no scenario in which the UK experiences an oil and gas boom. If employment growth in energy industries is going to happen, it will come from growth in green sectors.

Despite claims from industry bodies, extraction from Jackdaw and Rosebank would not support the UK’s or Scotland’s energy security or affordability. Oil and gas prices are set globally and regionally, so even if some of the extracted fuels ended up in the UK market, this would have no impact on domestic energy prices and households’ energy bills. 

The best way to get protection from oil and gas volatility is to not depend on oil and gas in the first place. The UK is already a net energy importer, which, combined with international pricing, is the source of our energy insecurity and volatile prices. The way to reduce this exposure is to move away from oil and gas as an energy source. The Climate Change Committee has shown that delivering on our decarbonisation targets would reduce the UK’s gas import dependency, as we can reduce the domestic demand for oil and gas faster than domestic production falls.

Andy Burnham is unlikely to endorse  a carte blanche to all new drilling, instead so far saying that he will stick to Labour’s promise not to issue new oil and gas licences while honouring existing ones. However, although Jackdaw and Rosebank were granted licences in 2022 and 2023, the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that these had been granted unlawfully in 2025 following legal challenges from Greenpeace and Uplift. This places the two projects in a slightly grey area when it comes to Labour’s promise.

Ultimately, these are semantics. These latest discussions around North Sea drilling are taking place while the UK suffers an unprecedented summer of heat waves, droughts, and fires. We are already seeing the impact of climate change, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency has been clear that there is “no room for new [oil and gas] fields” if the world is to meet the 1.5°C Paris target. This is because research suggests that emissions from already active or under-construction fields globally already exceed the worldwide carbon budget which we need to stay within to have a good chance of staying below 1.5°C of warming. Granting new drilling licenses is therefore incompatible with climate change mitigation and the UK’s climate commitments.

Andy Burnham’s decision on Jackdaw and Rosebank is being framed as a choice between jobs on the one hand, and climate change on the other. But our research shows that as well as being incompatible with climate change mitigation, further drilling will not change the overall decline of UK oil and gas production. The provision of good jobs for the energy workforce and energy security for UK households – two vital policy priorities – instead requires a steadfast focus on accelerating the roll out of green energy. 

Our analysis suggests there’s potential for the combined green energy workforce to grow by around 40,000 jobs by 2030, more than counterbalancing the expected decline in oil and gas employment. However, this is not inevitable, and will only happen through concerted policy effort – speeding up the roll out of green energy and ensuring that domestic manufacturing and supply chains are supported to benefit from that roll out. 

A decision to allow drilling in Rosebank and Jackdaw will only delay and distract from that urgent policy direction.