Tuesday, August 18, 2026
The climate change dilemma facing Burnham
They are referring to the decision by the prime minister over whether to approve the Rosebank oilfield and Jackdaw gasfield after consultations on both projects closed:
Industry sources have told The Times they believe Burnham will approve Jackdaw but may resist calls to go ahead with Rosebank because of opposition from MPs.
Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, said on Monday the government had never intended to “turn the taps off” in the North Sea. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “It’s never been our position to turn the taps off entirely and immediately, but it’s obviously also not our position to drill every drop.”
Burnham has told President Trump that he wants to be “pragmatic” over North Sea oil and gas and on Friday he said speeding up extraction could help Britain to meet net zero faster. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We won’t be able to stop using oil and gas for some time, that’s just a fact.
“The question is whether we can accelerate use of it so that we pay for the transition and one thing helps the other … whether that extraction can be the bridge to the clean energy future we need and bring it forward. It’s about a pragmatic approach to both of those.”
If he goes ahead with either project he will face opposition from some backbenchers. Cat Eccles, the Labour MP for Stourbridge, said on Monday that Britain should expand renewables, the electricity grid and energy storage rather than approve further drilling.
However, she admitted the term “net zero” had become politically poisonous. She told Today: “I think that the term itself, net zero, has become toxic, and we shouldn’t just place arbitrary targets on things for the sake of it.”
Eccles said that when she spoke to Burnham on Friday as he visited her constituency, which has been affected by wildfires, he was in “listening mode” and “wasn’t saying anything one way or the other” about the decisions.
There are of course many environment groups arguing that both of these applications need to be refused if we are serious about switching away from carbon-based energy to achieve our net zero targets.
On the other hand Burnham has to balance considerations such as energy security and the claim that Rosebank and Jackdaw could support 3,500 jobs at the peak of construction and 880 people would be employed over the lifetime of production.
This could be the first real test of Burnham's premiership.
