Why a North Sea oilfield is emerging as British PM Burnham’s big test
Reports suggesting the new British PM might allow drilling in the North Sea have excited US President Donald Trump, but are dividing local communities. In
Reports suggesting the new British PM might allow drilling in the North Sea have excited US President Donald Trump, but are dividing local communities. In 2020, Andrea Sanchez Quiroz moved from Edinburgh to her husband’s native Shetland, an archipelago in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway. About 130km (81 miles) from her house lies the United Kingdom’s largest unexploited oil and gas field, known as Rosebank. With Andy Burnham taking office as Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, speculation has swirled over whether he might support new North Sea drilling. Reports suggesting he might back exploration — Burnham and his team have not commented on them yet — have led to celebrations from United States President Donald Trump, a longtime advocate of fossil fuel projects. But if Burnham endorses such a move, Sanchez Quiroz is determined to stop it. “I have three children, and I want them to have a stable climate, and fresh water and food available,” she told Al Jazeera. Since 2021, the Shetland resident has been fighting against new oil and gas developments in the North Sea as part of a movement called Shetland Stop Rosebank. She is concerned about the global climate consequences of burning fossil fuels as well as damage to local marine ecosystems, including the protected Faroe-Shetland sponge belt. “As a planet, we are facing a big ecological crisis,” she explained. “I think at some point we need to say no to this development and find a new way of doing things.” Over the past few years, Rosebank has inspired fierce legal and civil resistance across the United Kingdom due to its climate impact and ties to Israeli apartheid. “Rosebank is the key climate test for this government,” said Robert Palmer, deputy director of environmental organisation Uplift and member of the Stop Rosebank coalition.
“The science is really clear that going ahead with Rosebank is just not compatible with the UK’s climate commitments.” What is the Rosebank oilfield? In 2023, Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor was granted permission by the UK government to begin drilling for oil. However, development was stalled by a legal challenge from Uplift and Greenpeace, which led to a ruling in January 2025 that consent for Rosebank and Shell’s Jackdaw field had been granted unlawfully. The judgement meant that both developers had to seek new approval from the government, with downstream emissions produced by burning extracted fossil fuels now considered in the environmental impact assessment. For Rosebank, this process kicked off in September 2025. In June, Shell and Equinor’s joint venture Adura submitted its final reports on downstream emissions. In early July, the UK government launched a public notice period closing on August 17, after which Burnham’s Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh will deliver the final decision. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero told Al Jazeera that they “are unable to comment further on individual projects”. Adura claims that Rosebank is consistent with the UK’s goal to reach net-zero by 2050, but energy transition researcher Greg Muttitt explained that climate change is a global phenomenon, so what matters is the cumulative impact of fossil fuel extraction around the world. In Muttitt’s opinion, there could be room for Rosebank only if the UK or other countries were to close a significant number of existing oilfields, which he said is “not a very plausible situation”. Who stands to profit? While Adura is the main developer, Aberdeen-based Ithaca Energy holds a 20 percent stake in the project. It is a subsidiary of Israeli energy conglomerate Delek Group, which has been blacklisted by the United Nations for its activities in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and which supplies fuel to the Israeli military and police through subsidiary Delek Israel.
The BriefWire