Labour is set to approve the controversial Jackdaw gas field project within weeks, with approval coming as soon as mid-September.
The gas field off the coast of Aberdeen was approved by the Conservative government in 2022, however was delayed by a Scottish court after an appeal from environmental groups.
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Greenpeace and Uplift brought the challenge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh over decisions to give approval to Jackdaw, as well as the the Rosebank oil field north west of Shetland.
Both projects are operated by Adura, a joint venture between energy giants Shell and Norway’s Equinor.
Officials claimed Jackdaw will account for about six per cent of UK gas supply while environmental groups say it will provide only two per cent.
Now, sources have suggested the greenlight for the Jackdaw project could come as soon as mid-September, just before Parliament breaks for party conference season, reports the BBC.
Adura has estimated that Jackdaw could produce 35.8m tonnes of carbon over its 11-year lifetime, the equivalent of 90 per cent of Scotland’s emissions for 2023.
However, it said a more likely estimate was about 23.6m tonnes, roughly equivalent to 60 per cent of the 2023 figure.
Climate transition minister Katie White was told on Thursday by a Labour backbencher that “we do need both”, on both projects.
Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, warned of “a geographical divide” in the House of Commons chamber, after MPs from constituencies north of the border “stressed how important this is to the north-east of Scotland”.
But several MPs also urged ministers to consider the environmental impact of more oil and gas drilling, following the record-breaking summer in 2026, the warmest since records began in 1884, according to provisional figures from the Met Office.
Ms White appeared in the Commons after public consultations on both projects came to an end last month.
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Conservative MP Douglas Lumsden, who swept to victory in a by-election in June, told MPs that voters in his Aberdeen South constituency backed him to send “a huge message to both this Labour Government and the SNP Government in Holyrood that they will not stand back and watch their jobs being destroyed”.
The new MP, who secured a 6,050-vote majority over the previous incumbents from the SNP, continued: “Every month, 1,000 jobs are being lost in the UK oil and gas industry. Every month this Government dithers and delays, it means more jobs lost.”
He added that oil and gas sector workers “need some assurance that their jobs are going to be saved”.
The minister replied that while she would not comment on the “quasi-judicial” process to approve or reject Rosebank and Jackdaw, she would “absolutely agree with him that jobs are key”.
Executive Director of Uplift Tessa Khan said more North Sea drilling would not cut energy bills and would “make no meaningful difference” to UK energy supply.
She told The BBC: “The science is clear that the world already has far more oil and gas than can ever be safely burned if we are to limit warming,” she added.
“When it comes to these decisions, the Prime Minister needs to listen to scientists warnings and think back to those families who lost their homes to this summer’s wildfires, the UK farmers struggling to grow our food in the drought, and the lives lost in the floods in Nepal, and not the self-interested demands of the oil companies.”
More to follow…
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