North Sea Oil & Gas — Rosebank and Jackdaw
⏳ NOT YET DECIDED — formal decision due after 17 August 2026 — Unlike the other pages on this tracker, this is not a confirmed policy — it's a live decision still being made. Two North Sea fields, Rosebank (oil) and Jackdaw (gas), already hold exploration licences and were approved to produce in 2022-23, but a court ruled those approvals unlawful in 2025 for failing to account for downstream emissions. Both projects are now going through a fresh approval process, with a public consultation closing 17 August 2026, after which Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh will make the final call. Reports suggest Burnham's team has asked the civil service to prepare options for backing the projects, but no decision has actually been made, and Downing Street has explicitly declined to comment on individual projects.
How this actually works
This isn't really a single policy decision — it's several overlapping legal, regulatory, and political processes at once. Rosebank and Jackdaw already have exploration licences (permission to look for oil and gas), which Labour's 2024 manifesto commitment not to issue new licences doesn't affect, since those licences already existed. What's actually undecided is production consent — permission to extract and sell what's found. Both fields had production consent granted in 2022-23, but the Supreme Court ruled in a related case that regulators must consider the climate impact of burning the fuel once extracted (not just the emissions from extracting it), not just when granting a licence — this set a precedent that applied retroactively to Rosebank and Jackdaw's approvals, which is why they were overturned in 2025. Both developers have now resubmitted environmental assessments accounting for downstream emissions, and it's this fresh assessment that the government is currently consulting on. Approving these two specific projects would not require issuing any new licence and would therefore not break the manifesto pledge in a strict legal sense — but it would represent Labour approving fossil fuel production it previously distanced itself from, which is the real political tension here.
The numbers
Timeline
Who it actually helps
What's being given up to pay for it
This is fundamentally a two-sided trade-off rather than a funded-vs-unfunded question like the other pages on this tracker: approving Rosebank and Jackdaw would support domestic energy jobs and production, and would not technically breach the manifesto's no-new-licences pledge — but it would put a Labour government in the position of actively approving significant new fossil fuel extraction, at a moment when its own Energy Secretary previously called the Rosebank licence "climate vandalism" while in opposition. Scotland's First Minister has separately called developing Rosebank "the wrong decision." Refusing both projects, conversely, avoids that political and climate contradiction but risks the investment-confidence and jobs arguments industry has raised, and leaves open the accusation — already being made — that a government under pressure on the cost of living is unwilling to back domestic energy production that could, in industry's telling, help with exactly that.
Reactions
“The Energy Secretary ought to issue new permits for Rosebank and Jackdaw to ensure the UK is a predictable country for investors. Reading the Labour manifesto, Rosebank is an existing licence for an existing field that we are now developing.”
“Support for the oil and gas industry is a signal that the country remains committed to producing, building and manufacturing — a signal that government backs the people and places that have powered this country for generations.”
“Climate vandalism.”
“I think Rosebank is the wrong decision. Scotland's future, the north east's future, is as the net zero capital not just of Europe but, I hope, of the world.”
Where things stand
Genuinely undecided. The public consultation on both fields' renewed environmental assessments closes 17 August 2026, after which Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh will make the formal decision — not Burnham personally, since individual project approvals sit outside full cabinet decisions. Government sources say Burnham is personally expected to lean supportive, but stress no final call has been made, and Number 10 has declined to comment on individual projects. We'll build out this page properly — costs, jobs figures, emissions estimates — once an actual decision is announced.