Usually in business you would prefer if the two major multibillion-pound projects sitting on your desk – Jackdaw and Rosebank – remained out of the political storm. Certainly, you’d rather they were not the focus of testy exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions of a Wednesday lunchtime.
But energy policy in the UK is uppermost in the minds of politicians and public right now, especially in the context of an ongoing war in Iran, which has engulfed the wider Middle East, leading to uncertainty in terms of where we get our energy and at what cost.
Across the despatch box last week, Kemi Badenoch posited that the Jackdaw field in the North Sea could start supplying gas to over a million homes by this winter, the equivalent of 6 per cent of the UK’s future gas supply. The Prime Minister countered that a regulatory process is underway to determine environmental consent for Jackdaw and that it must be respected. A robust knockabout in the best traditions of British parliamentary democracy, certainly. But, in fact, they are both correct.
The Jackdaw field sits approximately 150 miles to the east of Aberdeen – the Granite City where Adura is headquartered and, for decades, the UK’s energy capital. Adura is a new company, formed in December 2025, building on a world-class engineering legacy and proudly focused on delivering secure energy for the UK for many years to come. With oil and gas still accounting for more than 70 per cent of energy demand today, we are here to play our part through the transition.
Jackdaw – as with all North Sea projects – is subject to stringent regulation from exploration, through development and drilling and then ultimately production. It first obtained the necessary environmental consent from the government regulator to produce gas in 2022. On the basis of that approval, more than £1 billion has been spent on the project to date, supporting over 1,000 jobs in the supply chain and making a wider economic contribution of more than £2 billion.
Such projects are not trivial by any measure. Working in harsh conditions in the North Sea, the gas reservoir is located over 5km underneath the seabed, at a temperature of 191°C and under 17,000 psi of pressure – around five hundred times higher than the average car tyre or the equivalent of a thousand pressure cookers. These complex variables require the application of the brightest minds in the business to bring projects to fruition.
But at its heart Jackdaw is a straightforward proposition: bring more North Sea gas onshore through existing infrastructure to the St Fergus gas terminal in Aberdeenshire for processing, and onwards to UK homes and businesses. On our timeline, we could technically be ready to start producing gas from Jackdaw this October. Unlocking this resource would allow Adura to continue to meet the UK’s energy requirements, which government itself acknowledges is a crucial matter of national interest and security.
So what are we waiting for? In 2024, the UK Supreme Court issued a judgement that ruled that approval for future projects should consider emissions produced by the end use of oil and gas. In 2025, a further action in Scotland’s Court of Session applied that reasoning to the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields in the North Sea and determined that – while work on both projects could continue at the developer’s own risk and expense – they could not produce oil and gas until fresh consents were granted.
The necessary work is undertaken by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) under the auspices of the government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Projects are subject to thorough public scrutiny and consultation. Most recently this week, OPRED published a request for further technical information from Adura which we are reviewing and will seek to supply as quickly as possible to keep the projects on track. If the Government can reach a decision by the start of August, we believe the regulatory process can be concluded in line with our plans. That could indeed mean gas from Jackdaw going into the grid in time to supply British homes and businesses this winter.
The question is not whether we will continue to use oil and gas in the here and now. That is a certainty. As a country we are some distance away from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels completely. That will require a generational change in the design of our energy systems. The relevant question is where we choose to get our energy from.
As a rule of thumb, half of our gas supply comes from British waters, with every molecule of that resource used in this country. The other half comes from imports – some of that via pipeline from Norway and the rest cryogenically frozen as liquified natural gas (LNG) and shipped halfway across the world. If North Sea production declines at an accelerated rate, demand is met by more imports, often with far higher associated emissions. Jackdaw will be one of the lowest carbon developments in Europe with emissions as part of Adura’s portfolio of new production around eight times less than imported LNG – the supply of which has been acutely impacted by disruption to tankers navigating the Strait of Hormuz.
Aside from producing to the highest environmental standards, there are further major upsides to new North Sea projects. They sustain tens of thousands of UK jobs, represent billions of pounds of investment in our economy, drive revenues to the Exchequer to pay for public services and make us more energy secure as a nation. Imports do none of this. Great British oil and gas sustains the very supply chain and skilled workforce that is already delivering our future energy through renewables and new technology. These vast opportunities can be realised while remaining on course to achieving net zero.
The UK’s energy security is a national endeavour which should concern all of us, especially at this moment. As a major supplier of Britain’s energy, Adura is proud to play our part – and can continue to do for many more years to come.
Neil McCulloch is Chief Executive of the North Sea oil and gas producer Adura.