Poor returns for UK oil and gas would result from further drilling in the North Sea research by the campaign group Uplift has found and also reported by The Guardian. To the extent that oil and gas fields off the Scottish coast would make little difference to the UK’s oil and gas production.
A report by Uplift shows that the Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gas fields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK’s current imports of gas, leaving the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources. The Rosebank field, but mainly containing oil, would displace only about 1% of the UK’s gas imports.
Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, the campaign group, which compiled the data from public sources, said: “New fields like Jackdaw and Rosebank would do vanishingly little to boost UK gas production. Even in the most optimistic scenario, and assuming none of its gas is exported, Jackdaw would provide just 2% of UK demand over its nine- to 12- year lifetime.”
Philip Evans, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “Our fossil fuels are provided by a volatile global market which we cannot control, and is regularly upturned by reckless wars and blockades. The only path to real security is to leave fossil fuels behind as quickly as possible.”
Amid pressure from right wing parties to step up drilling in the North Sea, Retired R Adm Neil Morisetti, a professor of climate and resource security at University College London, said attempting to eke out the remaining oil and gas from the North Sea was “not the
answer” to the challenges facing the UK. “It will not bring down the price for consumers, nor will it deliver long-term energy security.
The international markets will determine the price and destination; that is not energy independence,” he said. Morisetti acknowledged that the UK would need oil and gas for years to come, but said the turmoil created by the wars in Iran and Ukraine had led to increasing uncertainty over supplies and rising prices.
In January 2025 the decision to allow the Rosebank oilfield was ruled unlawful by the courts. The proposed Rosebank development – the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield – had been given the go-ahead in 2023 under the Conservative government. But the court of
session in Edinburgh sided with campaigners and climate experts in ruling that the original decisions to permit Rosebank and a second, smaller, gas field called Jackdaw were unlawful, as they had not taken into account the carbon emissions created by burning any oil and gas produced.
Meanwhile hundreds of licences granted for new oil and gas projects in the North Sea under the Conservatives have so far produced only 36 days’ worth of gas, according to analysis conducted in November 2025 by Voar and Uplift. A previous version of
this analysis was conducted in October 2023.
Find out more about what ACE and local energy club (Settle Local Energy Club) are doing to combat the cost of energy and increase the production of renewable energy locally on our energy page: https://acesettleandarea.org/energy/