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, Miatta Fahnbulleh, 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 said last 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,
Carla Denyer MP
Dr Ellie Chowns MP
Adrian Ramsay MP
Hannah Spencer MP
Siân Berry MP
Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party
Mothin Ali, Deputy Leader of the Green Party
Rachel Millward, Deputy Leader of the Green Party
Anthony Slaughter, Wales Green Party Leader
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
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