Waiting or Pushing?

On 19 October 2026, the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero agreed to the grant of consent by the Oil and Gas Authority for the Jackdaw gas field project under the Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration, Production, Unloading and Storage (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2020. The decision deserves close attention by climate and energy lawyers both for its compatibility with the remaining global carbon budget and for its treatment of scope 3 emissions. The current piece focuses on the latter, arguing that the conditions placed on scope 3 emissions were inadequate, as were some for scope 1.

The Decision in Context

Jackdaw is a small field with all of its gas likely to be used domestically. A further decision is expected on the much larger Rosebank oil field, where much of the oil would be exported. The Jackdaw consent decision did not license a new gas field – the field licence already existed. The decision involved allowing project operations in the field to begin. There had been an earlier decision to grant consent to the project on 27 May 2022. However, that became unlawful as a result of the 2024 UK Supreme Court Finch ruling that an environmental impact assessment (EIA) had to assess the downstream, scope 3 combustion emissions from an oil and gas project.

The EIA at the heart of the 2022 decision had not included consideration of scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – only scope 1 emissions arising directly from the operations. The new consent process, which culminated in the October 2026 decision, addressed this deficit, with the revised decision based on an EIA which assessed scope 3. The project developer, Adura (a joint venture between Shell and Equinor), actually started operations in 2025, well before the recent decision, completing drilling in February 2026 (Decision, para. 6). It would have been subject only to the 2022 scope 1 conditions at that stage. Some potential scope 1 conditions are now academic (such as requiring the jack-up drilling rig to be powered by renewables), but many scope 1 conditions remain relevant to the project’s ongoing operations, and the developers were no doubt keenly awaiting what scope 3 conditions, if any, might be required of them. There were no scope 2 emissions (para. 35).

Conditions on Emissions

As the recent MACH Energy v Denman decision in Australia illustrates, considering emissions is not the same as considering whether to impose conditions on those emissions. The wording of the New South Wales legislation explicitly required the latter, but it should be read as a legal requirement more generally where a decision maker has found climate effects of a project to be significant, as the Secretary of State did in her October 2026 decision. The decision states initially that “No project-specific mitigation [had] been proposed for scope 3 emissions for EIA purposes, which reflects the developer’s position that the project would not have significant effects” (para. 177). However, applying a precautionary approach, the Secretary of State disagreed, arguing that, for EIA purposes, it was “not possible to rule out likely significant effects as a result of the project’s GHG emissions”, including its scope 3 emissions  (para. 178).

As Acland Bryant has noted, it seems odd for the minister to have disagreed on significant effects and yet approved the project without imposing any conditions on scope 3 under regulation 4(4) of the 2020 regulations. The June 2025 government guidance on scope 3 emissions (drawn up after Finch) requires conditions to be considered, stating that “where the assessment of GHG emissions identifies a likely significant adverse effect from a proposed project, consideration must be given by the developer to identifying suitable mitigation measures” (Guidance, p. 13). The guidance goes on to spell out that suitable mitigation measures available to a developer to control significant adverse effects on the environment from scope 3 emissions are likely to be limited. It states that offsetting lies at the bottom of an appropriate mitigation hierarchy, and that “emissions removal measures currently appear to be most appropriate for addressing any likely significant effects on the environment from scope 3 emissions” (p. 13).

Scope 3 Conditions

In her October 2026 decision, the Secretary of State did consider conditions on both scope 1 emissions and scope 3 emissions from Jackdaw. On scope 3, the decision rejected calls for a carbon takeback obligation (CTBO), which would require the developer to capture and store a progressive fraction of CO2 corresponding to the project’s downstream combustion emissions. The reason given was that the creation of a CTBO would be a major policy change requiring legislation rather than being introduced via consent conditions (para. 235). However, while the Secretary of State says that she did not consider it appropriate to impose a CTBO as a condition on Jackdaw (para. 235), she does not tell us what other scope 3 conditions she considered. While correctly associating a CTBO with CCS as one form of circular economy CO2 “waste” management, the decision unhelpfully fails to actively consider CCS as a possible condition in its own right, independent of a surrounding CTBO policy framework. The government’s scope 3 guidance does not mention CCS. As seen above, it instead lists carbon removal as the most appropriate measure for tackling scope 3 project emissions. CCS is not by itself typically classified as a removal technology. However, the decision does not consider removals like direct air capture as a potential scope 3 condition either.

In fact, the decision does consider CCS, but only passively in light of the developer mentioning that “some mitigation measures may be possible in future for some projects, for example if there is a market for carbon capture and storage” (para. 232). However, the Secretary of State simply takes at face value the developer’s assertion that “such measures require progressive government policy supported by collaboration between government, customers and private organisations” (para. 232).

As the “waiting or pushing” part of the current piece’s title suggests, this involves government regulation of scope 3 accepting the wait for a market-based and subsidy-driven arrival of CCS (which has already involved a wait of many years, with the climate movement widely seeing it as a technological smokescreen designed to delay the transition away from fossil fuels). Effective scope 3 governance should, instead, be actively pushing CCS and making it happen through conditions. But even if CCS were to be seen as too stringent a regulatory requirement, what about offsets as a condition for scope 3 emissions? Those are also often viewed with suspicion by the climate movement, but some high-integrity carbon credits are available. It looks as if the government has unlawfully failed to follow its own scope 3 guidance in not considering, let alone imposing even the lowest rung on the mitigation hierarchy. Nevertheless, its scope 3 guidance does not exactly help in that respect, expressing the view “that it is unlikely that the purchase of credits will be an effective mitigation measure for the purposes of the Offshore EIA Regulations” (p. 14).

Scope 1 Conditions

What then of scope 1 GHG emissions? First, the 2026 decision covers methane emissions, referring to the 2021 North Sea Transition Deal policy’s commitment to methane reduction targets and zero routine flaring and venting by 2030. Again, though, the government is prepared to wait rather than push here. That ban on flaring and venting of methane only comes in 2030 – it is not imposed via conditions now in 2026. We are simply told that “Methane emissions from the UK’s oil and gas sector are a relatively new area of focus”, that “the industry is still developing its capability in methane measurement, monitoring, reporting and abatement” and that “the developer is currently at an early stage in this process” (para. 67).

Methane can be released not only by routine flaring and venting but also via leaks. There, the decision again acknowledges an industry commitment to halve methane emissions by 2030, rather than imposing specific conditions to this effect more quickly. Based on this commitment, the government simply accepts that the developer’s forecast methane intensity figure for the project (0.44 kgCO2e/boe) is much lower than the global average (15kg CO2e/boe) (paras. 67-68) (defining GHG intensity as “the emission quantity of CO2e relative to the amount of hydrocarbon production” (para. 57)). And that is despite the fact that the forecast is an estimate, with the developer not having provided any underlying methodology and data (para. 67).

Second, the other part of the scope 1 emissions picture beyond methane is CO2. Carbon dioxide emissions from operations may arise from the drilled gas itself, and this CO2 has historically often been vented to the atmosphere. Other scope 1 CO2 emissions come from combustion of the fossil fuels used to power Jackdaw’s (now removed) drilling rig and (ongoing) wellhead platform (WHP) operations in the North Sea, and from power used in processing and transport. The 2026 decision discusses these scope 1 CO2 emissions (paras. 50-56) and the emissions intensity of the project with them included [57-59], and then reiterates the 2022 scope 1 conditions to control the venting of CO2 and for WHP power (para. 236). That WHP power is currently supplied by on-platform diesel generation rather than renewables (as found on many greener platforms in Norway). The 2026 decision does not actively seek to push conditions to reduce Jackdaw’s CO2 emissions intensity by requiring the latter. Instead, it notes the 2022 condition requiring the WHP to “accommodate a potential electrification retrofit should green power become available”, while simply accepting that the developer had provided no updated information on this for the 2026 decision (para. 236). Again, we have a passive waiting for renewables inscribed in a weak condition rather than an active pushing for them via a stronger consenting approach.

Fortunately, the Secretary of State does not oversell the scope 1 emissions-intensity advantages of the project. First, she notes the difference in scale between the project’s scope 1 emissions and its vastly greater scope 3 emissions (paras. 48, 169). Second, she acknowledges the uncertainty around the level of emissions intensity reduction associated with production from Jackdaw, and goes on to state that she would have agreed to the grant of consent even if the project did not deliver any reduction in emissions intensity (para. 182). That would make any legal challenge to the decision on the ground that scope 1 emissions intensity was based on shaky assumptions difficult – because that was not a significant basis for the decision anyway. However, it does not address whether the decision ought to have considered more intensive conditions for scope 1 CO2 emissions than its 2030 waiting approach on methane and its laissez-faire wait-and-see stance on renewables for platform power.

Conclusion

It is odd that the Secretary of State found there to be significant likely climate effects from the Jackdaw project and yet decided not to impose any conditions on its scope 3 emissions. It is true that she considered imposing conditions, but she actively considered just the CTBO measure at the top of the scope 3 mitigation hierarchy, only to reject it as requiring a legislative foundation. CCS was mostly treated as part of the CTBO package; insofar as it was considered in its own right, it was similarly held to be something for the future, needing more support to bring it into being. Also noteworthy is the tension of the scope 3 guidance wanting to see measures from a scope 3 mitigation hierarchy while dismissing offsets as a measure from that hierarchy. It is perhaps no surprise that the government felt compelled to leave offsets out of its October 2026 decision altogether, but the legality of that (and the underlying scope 3 guidance) appears questionable. Based on the guidance, it seems to be carbon removals or nothing, which is not much of a mitigation hierarchy for scope 3 emissions. But, given that, it is strange that removals were not considered in the decision at all.

In contrast, conditions for the less climate-impactful scope 1 emissions are not only considered but actually imposed. There too though, one might have expected less of a waiting until 2030 approach on methane conditions as well as a more active push on renewable platform power rather than being so accommodating of industry by requiring only renewables readiness. The climate crisis is now. The government’s decision involves too much waiting and not enough pushing.