Andy Burnham is expected to delay approving plans for the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea until after the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where Labour is facing a challenge from Green Party Leader Zack Polanski. The Telegraph has the story.
The major project had been expected to be approved as soon as Tuesday, but Whitehall sources said it had now been delayed until the late autumn.
It means the announcement is now expected after the October 8th contest to replace Sir Keir Starmer as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras. It is expected to be a two-horse race between Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, and Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Labour Leader of Camden council.
The delay comes despite warnings of looming gas shortages facing Britain this winter. Jackdaw bosses have previously said the field could be needed to avert a “gas supply emergency”.
Pushing back the plans would allow Burnham to avoid awkward confrontations at the looming Labour Party conference in Liverpool at the end of September.
Approval for Jackdaw and its sister project, the Rosebank oil field off Shetland, is bitterly opposed by a significant number of Left-wing Labour MPs.
However Andrew Bowie, the Shadow Energy Secretary, said delays in approving Jackdaw would push the offshore work needed to get gas flowing deeper into winter, when bad weather would increase the risks to offshore workers.
In a letter to Burnham, seen by the Telegraph, Bowie asked him to confirm “suggestions that you are about to delay the decision on the Jackdaw gas field until after the conference recess and Holborn and St Pancras by-election”.
He added: “If this is the case, it would be nothing short of you placing the interests of the Labour Party before the interests of Great Britain.”
Bowie has also tabled a set of parliamentary questions designed to bring Miatta Fahnbulleh, the Energy Secretary, or Michael Shanks, the Energy Minister, to the Commons before Parliament goes into recess on Tuesday.
The formal decisions on Jackdaw and Rosebank lie with Fahnbulleh. A Department of Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman rebuffed suggestions of a delay, saying there was no agreed timing for a decision on Jackdaw.
Worth reading in full.
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Come on, bye elections are far more important than energy security and survival…to the stupid, self-serving politicians.
And welfare scrounger payments more important than defence.
Has he decided to be indecisive again?
Excellent question!
Not sure on that one – can I think about it for a while?
OOPS—-Dithering and wondering how to appease the phoney planet saving Greens, Lib Dems and 70% of his own party. —-Oh dear what a dilemma. You can see the wheels turning inside his feeble socialist brain “We need the resources and I want them but if I allow drilling I might be TOAST”
Oh so the welfare of this entire country is out on hold because of party politics. folks if I were you I would ask for my money back. You simply are not getting your money’s worth.
I just hope a delusional Labour Party member shakes a tin in my face 😁 Vote Reform UK as if your life depends on it because it does
AIM HIGH VOTE LOWE MILLIONS MUST GO!!!
Will you put the tin where the sun doesn’t shine??
FFS. Jackdaw is ready to go.
The production platform is built and commissioned, the wells are drilled and completed, the export pipeline is in place.
(a former rig of mine drilled them)
There is a huge amount of high pressure gas sitting behind closed valves.
These utter idiots would rather pay a fortune to ship liquified natural gas from the middle east than open the f&%king valves.
This does my head in.
That’s precisely what it’s supposed to do, do your head in.
Pretending to save the planet doesn’t come cheap and causes irrational behaviours verging on the insane. Such is the power of Climate Groupthink.
It’s good to see that the grownups are in charge. People actually believed that claim, probably still do.
Who will rid us of this troublesome twat?
Andy Burnem’s a w@nker!
You heard it here first.
Eventually more people will come to learn that and the Football Shirt Boy bounce will disappear. Helping in this will be the October energy cap price increase, followed by the January increase and probably the same in April to complete a whole year of increases while we await Fattybullah delivering the £300 saving MiliTwat promised us.
Now we know what we have always thought, that this bunch of scumbags will always put party before country. Whether it is letting future Labour voters into the country en masse or destroying what remains of our industry to keep green loons like Milibrain or Fahnbullah happy and finally ensuring their pockets are lined with gold (have we had any clarification of Mrs Burnham and her electric car contract?). Whatever it is, it is country last, Labour party first and ministers’ wealth first and foremost.
Putting Country first.
And in other News President Trump, backs calls for a United Ireland and Argentina’s claim to the Falklands.
Nothing at all to do with the spouting of Calamity Kid Minibrain about Israel.