This morning the Green Party leadership, Green MPs and Green
peers co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Energy
Security and Net Zero, , to urge her not to
approve the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. Citing the fact
that it will not reduce energy prices, protect jobs, or give the
UK energy sovereignty.
The full text of the letter is as follows:
Dear Miatta,
Do not approve Jackdaw gas field in the North
Sea.
We are writing in response to alarming reports that you intend to
give the go ahead to the Jackdaw gas field as soon as next week.
As Green MPs and peers we cannot sit back and watch you proceed
unchallenged with this act of climate vandalism.
Approving new drilling at Jackdaw will not take a penny
off energy costs nor protect jobs. As you saidlast month, if you care
about affordability, North Sea does not solve that problem for
you, with UK bill-payers still facing the highest energy prices
in three years this winter, as a result of our continued exposure
to volatile global gas markets. Further, jobs in the North Sea
have been in decline for two decades. Jackdaw would only create
27 direct full-time jobs,
with the platform unstaffed for most of its operating life and
much of the construction already having taken place in Norway. It
is completely dishonest of your government to use the legitimate
concerns of job security and the cost of living to falsely
justify more fossil fuel extraction.
Approving Jackdaw will not give the UK energy
sovereignty. Even under the most optimistic scenarios
Jackdaw is projected to contribute just 2% of UK gas demand over
its lifetime (Uplift, 2026). We know that
the only way to achieve energy sovereignty is to get the UK off
fossil fuels as fast as possible, by significantly scaling up
renewable energy and electrification.
Approving new oil and gas will add fuel to the fire of
the climate emergency. Last week, the UN Environment
Programme warned that immediate and
sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions were crucial to avoid
the worst impacts of climate breakdown. Approving more fossil
fuels, at a time when the UK has just experienced record-breaking
and deathly heatwaves and wildfires, is a complete dereliction of
responsibility.
Approving Jackdaw will line the pockets of
shareholders. The operating company, Adura, a joint
venture between Shell and Equinor, has been criticised for
potentially allowing Shell to write off £1.3 billion in UK tax
(Global Witness, 2025). Shell
has also faced criticism that it paid little or no tax in this
country over several years despite huge global profits. Instead
of new drilling, we need to ensure that the existing tax
instruments, like the windfall tax, actually bring in the revenue
that was promised, and end the subsidies that multinational oil
and gas companies have received at UK taxpayers' expense.
We are therefore urging you to be straight with the public and
instead focus on measures that would actually bring down bills
and create secure jobs, like scaling up cheaper home-grown
renewables, rolling out a fully-funded national home insulation
programme, fully decoupling the price of electricity from gas,
and ending rampant profiteering by energy companies.
Your government promised change, not continuity. Approving
Jackdaw, after the hottest summer on record, isn't doing things
differently. The new Prime Minister must not repeat Keir
Starmer's mistake of treating climate and nature as second order.
Change starts with ruling out all new oil and gas.
Yours sincerely,
MP
Dr MP
MP
MP
MP
, Leader of the Green
Party
Mothin Ali, Deputy Leader of the Green Party
, Deputy Leader of the
Green Party
, Wales Green Party
Leader
of Manor Castle
