Critics say move will jeopardise climate targets, fail to cut cost of living and distract from need to decarbonise energy
Climate campaigners and green experts have condemned the government’s decision to allow the drilling of the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea.
They said approval for the site would jeopardise the UK’s climate targets, fail to reduce the cost of living, and distract from the need to decarbonise the UK’s energy sector.
Many drew parallels with the record-breaking heatwave and drought, fuelled by global heating, that the UK experienced this summer.
“Is the prime minister living in a parallel universe? One where we haven’t just endured our hottest summer on record, with droughts, wildfires and, in all likelihood, the most heat-related deaths on record?” said Danny Gross, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth. “And where the UN hasn’t warned that we’re on the brink of breaching the all-important 1.5C warming limit?”
As the gas from Jackdaw will be sold on international markets, Gross said it would not bolster the UK’s energy security, but would add to global greenhouse gas emissions. “The disconnect [between the government’s green ambitions and its actions] is maddening,” he said.
“This benefits oil giants and their shareholders and doesn’t make life more affordable as Burnham promised,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the campaigning organisation Uplift. “Clean energy is how we lower bills, reindustrialise regions and increase public control – not by caving to an oil industry making obscene profits while pushing up bills, laying off workers and driving the heatwaves we saw this summer.”
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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/21/jackdaw-gasfield-climate-campaigners-condemn-decision-north-sea-mining
dizzy 10.18am: I also find this very perplexing, difficult to see who benefits from it other than Shell e.g. there appears to be over-production of fossil fuels (although that doesn’t mean that they’re where they’re useful) and large fossil-fuel subsidies. I am busy, have other pressing demands on my time atm, will return to it.
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