The penny is dropping in government. Britain, even in rapid energy transition mode, will still need a lot of gas in the years ahead – and needs to know how the gas will arrive.
It could hardly be otherwise when there are 24m households with a gas connection, largely for heating, and the pace of heat pumps adoption is miserable. Last year gas comprised about a third of the UK’s overall energy needs. Though annual consumption is in decline, the days of peak use during a bleak midwinter can still be as high as ever.
The difficulty has been getting ministers to focus on the combination of declining North Sea volumes (about 40% of supply), skimpy levels of gas storage and limited capacity for importing the stuff via tanker…
It would, after all, be bizarre to outline a potential supply crunch that has been caused, in large part, by growing reliance on imports, and then disallow a field that will make the problem slightly smaller. Jackdaw will account for about 6% of domestic North Sea gas volumes and could be up and running in time for winter.
As you know, projects have to be approved by the government(s).
The oil and gas industry has urged Andy Burnham to approve two controversial North Sea developments as a public consultation on the UK’s largest undeveloped oil field closes. The Rosebank oil field, 80 miles northwest of Shetland, and the Jackdaw gas field, east of Aberdeen, are awaiting a formal decision from the government after a previous approval by a Conservative administration in 2023 was quashed by the Scottish courts.
British Gas boss warns UK risks winter fuel shortage https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/08/27/british-gas-boss-warns-of-winter-fuel-shortage/ Chris O’Shea, the Chief Executive of Centrica, said Britain had “almost no gas in storage in the UK for the coming winter”. O’Shea said low gas reserves in the UK were a “huge concern” and that the country had “for too long” relied on other countries for energy imports while underinvesting in storage and power plants.
Britain’s gas facilities were around 30% full this week, down from 46% at the same time last year. They were more than 90% full in the two years before that. Gas levels are currently at the lowest level for August since records began, according to Bloomberg data.