Twenty-Seven Jobs and a Reputation
Published on HivePostify by @revisesociology · Fri Sep 04 2026
Andy Burnham has to decide whether to approve two North Sea developments — the Jackdaw gas field off Aberdeen and the larger Rosebank oil field west of Shetland — after a court ruled that ministers must account for the lifetime carbon costs of extraction, not merely the emissions produced getting it out of the seabed.
Consultations have closed. The decision now rests with Burnham and his Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, and is expected shortly.
Andy Burnham’s government is probably going approve the Jackdaw gas field, with a formal decision expected later in September. Rosebank, the much larger and predominantly oil-producing development west of Shetland, remains under consideration, with a separate decision expected later this year.
27 People...?
The industry case has always rested on jobs and tax. Which makes it unfortunate for the industry that Adura's own environmental impact assessment puts Jackdaw's direct full-time employment at twenty-seven people. Greenpeace found the figure buried in the developer's paperwork, and Hannah Martin has been making hay with it on LabourList.
In fairness twenty-seven is the installation-specific number for a platform designed to sit unstaffed for most of its life. The wider picture includes supply chain contracts, construction work largely already done in Norway, and a plausible argument that Jackdaw gas keeps the Shearwater hub economic and therefore protects a few hundred existing jobs. Adura claims the two projects together support around 3,500 roles at peak construction. Those numbers should not be stacked on top of each other and presented as permanent employment, but nor is twenty-seven the whole story.
It is, however, the story that will be repeated, because it is devastating and it fits on a placard. That's how political arithmetic works.
Pragmatism as a position
Burnham is pitching himself as the pragmatist, and Gaby Hinsliff's reading in The Guardian is that he isn't in the pocket of fossil fuel lobbyists so much as genuinely responsive to rig workers, car manufacturers and the Dale Vince argument that if we're burning the stuff anyway we may as well pump it ourselves rather than import it at higher emissions intensity.
That argument is not stupid. Kathryn Porter is right on UnHerd that framing this as "new fields versus no oil" is a false choice, given how far Britain remains from running on clean energy alone.
The trouble is that pragmatism is a temperament, not a policy, and it offers no defence when the question is put simply. Labour promised no new licences. Both fields squeaked through on a technicality because they were already in the system at the last election. Voters won back from the Greens did not vote for a technicality.
The symbolic economy
What makes this decision unusually pure is that it barely matters materially. Neither field will move household bills, since oil and gas price on international markets. Neither will meaningfully alter UK emissions trajectories either way. The real stakes are entirely symbolic: what kind of government is this, and who does it flinch in front of?
After a summer in which more than a thousand wildfires burned across England and Wales, that symbolism is not a small thing.
Final thoughts
Burnham will probably approve Jackdaw and stall Rosebank, which is the answer that annoys everyone slightly rather than anyone enormously. Classic split-the-difference governance.
He should remember that the compromise position has a poor record. It rarely satisfies the industry, never satisfies the campaigners, and leaves the Prime Minister owning the emissions and the twenty-seven jobs.
Tags: #uk#oil#energy#cent#dave#proofofbrain