One of the North Sea’s most controversial gas projects has clawed its way back from the courtroom after climate legal challenges threw its future into limbo. Adura, an incorporated joint venture between UK-headquartered Shell and Norway’s Equinor, has now secured clearance to push ahead with Jackdaw, a high-stakes field designed to heat millions of British homes, even as environmental battles look set to rage on.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has granted development and production consent for the Jackdaw field off the coast of northeast Scotland to Adura, following the SoS’ consideration of the company’s environmental statement and agreement to the grant of consent.
Stuart Payn, NSTA’s Chief Executive, commented: “After robust scrutiny we have today granted consent for the Jackdaw field development which allows the owners to proceed with their project and produce gas from the field upon completion of development work.
“This project will support the UK’s energy security by providing domestically produced gas, generate tax revenues, safeguard supply chain jobs, use existing infrastructure, and have an emissions intensity well below the UK average.”
Jackdaw has the potential to deliver around 6% of projected UK North Sea gas production, which is considered to be enough fuel to heat the equivalent of 1.4 million homes at a time when older gas fields are reaching the end of their production.
Payn added: "Now is the time to move forward at pace and we welcome the government's approval in allowing us permission to consider a small number of new out of round licences ahead of forthcoming legislation."
The field, located approximately 250 kilometers east of Aberdeen, is expected to be among the lowest-emission developments on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), while supporting jobs and bolstering Britain’s energy security.
Previously, the NSTA gave consent on June 1, 2022, to develop the Jackdaw project after the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment & Decommissioning (OPRED) agreed to the grant of consent for the development following an assessment of the environmental impacts of the project.
However, Greenpeace asked the Scottish Court to review the grant of consent and OPRED’s agreement to the grant of consent in relation to the planning application and the need to consider not only the emissions from the platform’s operations but also the emissions when the gas is used by customers.
The UK Supreme Court issued a judgment in a case referred to as ‘Finch’ in 2024, regarding a proposed oil well in Surrey that was approved by the local council in 2019, ruling that the approval should also have considered the emissions produced by the oil’s end use as well as those emissions caused by the oil well’s operations.
Afterward, the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled on January 30, 2025, that the previous government’s decision to approve the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields was unlawful. As a result, the court overturned the decision, accepting Uplift’s argument that the government failed to consider the emissions that would be caused by burning the oil and gas produced by these fields when it approved them.
Adura has continued to comply with all laws and regulations relating to the Jackdaw project situated in blocks 30/02a, 30/03a, and 30/02d of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf that lies in a water depth of approximately 78 meters.
The field is located in the Central North Sea (CNS), 30 kilometers southeast of the Shearwater platform and adjacent to the UK/Norway median line. Jackdaw is a gas/condensate development comprising a not permanently attended wellhead platform with four wells, tied back to the Shearwater hub via a 31-kilometer pipeline.
The steel jacket and topside were installed in August 2023 and October 2025, respectively. The pipeline was laid in July 2024 and the drilling activities were completed in early 2026.
While the latest approval marks a major turning point, the environmental battles are not entirely over since environmental groups like Greenpeace remain strongly opposed to the development of the North Sea oil and gas projects, which have become a primary battleground for climate litigation.
As a result, activists continue to scrutinize these approvals. By resubmitting the required environmental statements and clearing this regulatory hurdle, the Jackdaw project has overcome the specific legal blockades that previously stalled it, allowing developers to finally move forward even if political and activist friction persists.
Responding to the government giving the Jackdaw gas field the go-ahead, Sam Richards, CEO of Britain Remade, said: “Britain is going to need gas for decades to come, as even the Climate Change Committee recognises. The choice is not between gas and no gas, but between gas produced in British waters and gas shipped in from abroad at higher cost and with higher emissions.
“But while we should use what we have, the North Sea is a declining basin, and we need to transition to homegrown clean power. Britain’s always-on electricity should come from new clean nuclear, both gigawatt-scale reactors and small modular reactors that can be sited in far more places than their bigger cousins.
“Right now Britain is the most expensive place in the world to build new nuclear. Ministers should urgently implement the Fingleton Review in full in order to drive down cost. The government should also commit to a new small modular reactor at Dungeness without delay.”