As the consultations on Rosebank and Jackdaw come to an end, we are once again debating whether the UK should continue to develop its own oil and gas resources.
Let me start with something that shouldn't be controversial: climate change is real. We need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, develop our abundant offshore wind resources and electrify much more of our economy.
But we still use oil and gas — and we use a lot of it. So while that demand remains,would it not make more sense to produce what we can ourselves rather than increase our reliance on imports?
Groups such as Uplift have dominated much of the media debate with their arguments against new licences and further drilling in the North Sea. Some of those arguments contain some truth but look a little more closely and the picture becomes much less straight forward.
1. “We can't meet our climate goals while approving new oil and gas licences”
The problem with this argument is that climate change is global, not British.
Stopping UK production does not automatically stop UK consumption. If we still need the gas, we will import it instead. The NSTA calculates that domesticallyproduced gas has an average upstream carbon intensity of around 21kg CO₂e/boe,compared with around 79kg for imported LNG.
Critics rightly point out that this comparison excludes the emissions created when the gas is eventually burned. But if we consume the gas anyway, those combustion emissions occur regardless of where it came from.
What does change, are the additional emissions associated with producing, liquefying, transporting and regasifying imported LNG.
While demand remains, replacing lower-emission domestic production with higher-emission imports is not a climate victory.
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2. “New North Sea production won't lower our bills”
This is largely true. UK gas is sold into international markets and producing more of it won't suddenly give Britain cheap gas.
But since when was the only economic value of producing something the price we pay for it?
Oil and gas production generates investment, jobs, tax revenues, exports and supply-chain activity. Indeed, crude oil and petroleum remain among Britain's biggest goods exports, worth around £17 billion. Moreover, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) estimates that Rosebank and Jackdaw together could generate £28.7 billion in GVA and £9.1 billion in UK supply-chain activity, and contribute £3.8 billion in tax revenues by 2034.
Those are industry forecasts and should be treated as such, but the economic contribution doesn't cease to exist simply because the projects won't lower the wholesale gas price.
Affordability matters. So do jobs, trade, investment and tax revenues.
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3. “New drilling won't improve energy security”
Uplift argues that Jackdaw would reduce Britain's annual gas import dependency by “just 2%” on average. Two per cent sounds insignificant. But 2% of a country's entire gas requirement isn't necessarily insignificant — and it is only one way of presenting the number.
OEUK says that, at peak production, Rosebank and Jackdaw together could provide 10% of UK domestic natural gas production and 10% of UK oil output.
Neither statistic is necessarily wrong. They use different denominators and measure different things. But they certainly create very different impressions.
Energy security isn't about producing 100% of everything ourselves. It's about resilience: having diverse sources of supply and reducing unnecessary exposure to overseas producers, international competition, shipping routes and geopolitics.
If Britain consumes gas, producing some of it ourselves quite obviously makes us less dependent on imports than producing none of it.
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4. “Fourteen years of licensing produced only 36 days of gas”
This is one of Uplift's most impactful statistics— but it deserves scrutiny.
Uplift's analysis says licences awarded through seven licensing rounds between 2010 and 2024 have so far resulted in the production equivalent of just 36 days of current UK gas demand.
But a licence isn't a producing field. A licence gives a company the right to explore an area. Exploration frequently finds nothing. Some discoveries aren't commercially viable. Others depend on existing infrastructure, technology,commodity prices and the fiscal and regulatory environment.
That's the nature of exploration - everywhere in the world.
And there is another obvious problem: if we stop exploring, eventually we stop improving our understanding of what is actually left.
The North Sea is unquestionably a mature basin. But mature is not synonymous with finished.
The useful question isn't how many licences were issued. It's how much economically recoverable resource remains — and what technology, infrastructure and policy could make viable.
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5. “A rapid transition away from oil and gas is economically achievable”
This is where I think we need to look much more closely at British manufacturing. Industrial emissions fell sharply in 2025 — by around 12%. That sounds like fantastic progress towards decarbonisation.
But a significant part of that fall was driven by the closure of blast furnaces in Britain's iron and steel industry and lower industrial gas use. In other words, some emissions disappeared because some production disappeared. If we then import those products instead, the global emissions associated with producing them haven't necessarily disappeared. But the British jobs, investment, skills and tax revenues have.
Ironically, offshore wind is an example of this. Britain has some of the best offshore wind resources in the world and should be exploiting them. But there is a huge difference between generating renewable electricity in Britain and building the industrial infrastructure that generates it here.
Britain has become a world leader in deploying offshore wind, but countries in Europe including Denmark, Germany and Spain built much of the manufacturing capability behind it. The Government's own analysis now says Britain's wind supply chain “relies heavily on imports”, with traditional fabricators concentrated largely in Europe and Asia.
There is also another uncomfortable irony: one of the obstacles to rebuilding energy-intensive manufacturing in Britain is the cost of industrial energy itself.
Look at what Britain actually exports. Among our biggest goods exports are mechanical power generators, pharmaceuticals, cars, crude oil and petroleum, and aerospace components.
Making things still matters. Climate goals should not become synonymous with deindustrialising Britain.
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6. “The transition must be ‘just’ for workers and communities”
On this, we agree. But if the transition is going to be just, the replacement jobs actually have to exist.
The oil and gas industry still supports more than 200,000 jobs across the UK. Offshore wind employment is growing and now supports around 40,000. That's great news. But replacing an industrial ecosystem built over decades is very different from simply creating new jobs elsewhere in the economy. People don't transition on a spreadsheet.
Jobs need to exist in the right places, at the right time and with comparable skills and salaries. Otherwise, experienced engineers, geoscientists, offshore workers and supply-chain companies won’t wait around. They will take their expertise overseas. And those are precisely the skills Britain needs for offshore wind, carbon capture and the wider energy system.
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In conclusion
We keep debating supply as though restricting it automatically removes demand. Ultimately,this is where I think the North Sea debate has gone wrong. It doesn't.
Take petrol cars as an example. Despite the rapid growth of EVs, around 610,000 new petrol-only cars were registered in Britain in 2025. In 2022, that number was around 695,000. Transition may be happening, but the pace is slow - demand has not disappeared.
At the same time, our need for energy is growing. AI,data centres and the increasing electrification of our economy will require enormous amounts of additional power.
Britain has incredible natural advantages. We have some of the world's best offshore wind resources, remaining oil and gas resources, decades of offshore expertise, established supply chains and world-class engineering capability. Why would we not make the most of all of them?
We need more renewable generation, more electrification and more investment in nuclear, geothermal, tidal, CCS and the technologies that will shape our future energy system. But while we still consume oil and gas, we should also be willing to produce what we responsibly can ourselves —supporting British jobs, investment, tax revenues, exports and energy security— rather than increasingly paying other countries to produce it for us.
Britain does not need to choose between developing the energy system of the future and making responsible use of the resources we have today. We should be doing both.
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