The chief executive of the company behind the Jackdaw gas platform has warned that the UK faces a risk of domestic supply shortages this winter if the government does not approve production – a decision he called “hyper critical”.
Speaking from the field 150 miles east of Aberdeen, Adura chief Neil McCulloch told BBC News that the project is in its final stages and could meet 6% of the UK’s gas needs from 1 October. “The wells are drilled, they’re hooked up. We’re just readying the systems,” he said. “It will be ready for the 1st of October.”
“Jackdaw boss warns UK must approve gas field to avoid winter shortages, as regulator considers revised applications.”
The warning comes as the industry regulator considers revised applications for Jackdaw and Adura’s Rosebank oil field west of Shetland, after a court ruled both had been unlawfully approved. The UK has only about eight days of gas storage, McCulloch noted, leaving it with limited options in the event of “a gas supply emergency”.
That emergency, he said, could be triggered by a prolonged period of still, cloudy weather that hampers wind and solar generation, or by hostility from “foreign threat actors”. “If I were the secretary of state for energy security and net zero,” McCulloch added, “I’d be looking closely at where’s my next source of energy security, and you’re standing on it.”
Environmental campaigners, however, argue the opposite. Tessa Khan, executive director of the campaign group Uplift, called any new approval “a huge betrayal of the British public” at a time when “ordinary people are suffering so much as a result of these record-breaking heatwaves.” Adura has spent around £1.5bn on the project, a joint venture between Shell and the Norwegian state firm Equinor.
McCulloch countered that Jackdaw will provide energy security, employment and taxation, and that a “business-as-usual” atmosphere prevails on the platform, even as its fate hangs in the balance. The government has yet to announce a decision on the revised applications.