Energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh approved drilling in the Jackdaw gasfield this morning, a North Sea gas deposit 150 miles from Aberdeen. The decision ends a legal saga that began when the Conservative government first gave consent to Adura — a Shell/Equinor joint venture — in 2022, only for campaigners to block it via judicial review. The companies resubmitted with updated climate impact data. Fahnbulleh signed off. The numbers tell the story of a decision shaped by political expediency, not energy logic. Jackdaw will supply roughly 2% of the UK's gas over its lifespan. It will create 27 direct full-time jobs. North Sea gas production is set to fall 99% by 2050 regardless of new drilling — geology, not policy, is driving the decline. Even approving every possible new North Sea licence would only slow the decline from 99% to 97%. The government simultaneously announced a wealth fund to channel North Sea tax revenues into low-carbon projects, a concession to climate critics that reads more like a hedge than a strategy. The standard arguments for Jackdaw — lower prices, energy security, jobs — collapse under scrutiny. Gas prices are set on international markets; Jackdaw changes nothing. Energy security is a function of diversification away from gas, not marginal additions to domestic supply. The 27-job figure, while understating supply-chain effects, is dwarfed by the alternative: the thinktank E3G estimates a national home retrofitting programme would create 50,000 jobs across thousands of small businesses while directly cutting household energy bills. The fiscal case is equally thin. The government estimates North Sea oil and gas will generate £4.1bn in tax revenue in 2025-2026, but £3.26bn goes straight back to the industry in tax relief and support — a net public return of roughly £840m against ongoing environmental and political costs. Meanwhile, 85% of UK homes still depend on gas boilers, just 2% use heat pumps (one of Europe's lowest rates), and previous insulation programmes have ranged from aborted (the Green Homes Grant, killed after six months) to actively damaging (the Energy Company programme left 98% of externally insulated homes with serious damp and mould issues). The Rosebank oilfield — 80 miles off Shetland, producing seven times Jackdaw's carbon emissions — remains undecided. Some environmental groups view the Jackdaw-only approval as an acceptable compromise. But the framing obscures the real failure: the government quietly ditched a ban on gas boilers by 2035 and is now considering cutting heat pump subsidies, which Treasury officials dismiss as a "middle-class luxury." The structural addiction to gas heating persists while the transition infrastructure goes unfunded. The most honest argument for Jackdaw is the slowest one: keeping a small number of North Sea workers employed buys time for a smoother transition to green energy jobs. But as the Guardian's environment editor Fiona Harvey notes, the skills transfer is real — boiler companies could manufacture heat pumps, and their installers could be retrained. What's missing is political will and funding, not capability. "The problem is, this isn't sexy, and there's no big fossil fuel lobby behind it," the Guardian's environment correspondent Matthew Taylor observes. A national insulation programme would improve energy security, cut bills, and create well-paid jobs. Instead, the government approved a gasfield that provides 2% of supply and 27 jobs. The decision reveals the persistent structural advantage of incumbent fossil fuel interests over distributed, labour-intensive alternatives. The oil and gas lobby produces arguments; the retrofitting sector produces savings. One has a seat at the table. The other has a thinktank report.
