Over 200 Musicians Urge UK Prime Minister to Block New North Sea Oil and Gas Drilling
More than 200 musicians — including Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Ed O'Brien and Philip Selway, the Cure's Robert Smith, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, Olly Alexander, Paris Paloma, Anoushka Shankar, Jacob Collier, David Gray, Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip, Kevin Rowland, Anna Calvi, the electronic duo Bicep, and the xx singer Romy — have signed a letter to UK prime minister Andy Burnham urging him to reject plans for new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea (The Guardian).
The letter, signed by 211 artists in total, targets the Rosebank oilfield and the Jackdaw gasfield. The government's consultation on Rosebank closed on Monday, and ministers must now decide on the future of both projects. Rosebank and Jackdaw are backed by the company Adura, which says the projects would bring £10.8 billion in investment and support 3,500 jobs at peak construction, with 880 employees over the projects' production lifetime.
Rosebank lies about 80 miles north-west of the Shetland Islands. The musicians' letter warns that the project would fail to lower energy bills or improve energy security because most of the oil extracted is likely to be exported rather than used domestically. Environmental activists have estimated that Rosebank could produce more than 250 million tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime — a figure they describe as equivalent to roughly 70% of the UK's annual emissions.
Brian Eno, a co-founder of the campaign group EarthPercent, directly challenged Burnham to make what he called the "right decision" and reject the Rosebank plans (The Irish News). The pressure on the prime minister extends well beyond the music world. Jesuit Missions signed an open letter to Burnham in July urging him to block the Rosebank oil field (Jesuit Missions). Environmental groups have separately pressed Burnham to refuse permission for both Jackdaw and Rosebank as part of the broader climate fight (BBC News).
The backdrop is stark. The Met Office said the UK summer in 2026 was on course to be the hottest since records began, a data point that campaigners are implicitly leaning on as they press the government to align drilling decisions with its climate commitments.
The relationship between Burnham and at least one of the signatory artists carries its own political texture. Burnham and Massive Attack joined forces in June 2025 to endorse the Fossil Fuel Treaty in Manchester (Fossil Fuel Treaty). That prior collaboration gives the current letter a particular edge: the prime minister is being pressed not by distant celebrity voices but by artists who have previously stood alongside him on a fossil fuel phase-out platform.
The substantive contest is between two competing frames. Adura's case rests on capital investment and employment figures, positioning Rosebank and Jackdaw as economic assets during a period when North Sea decommissioning — the process of safely shutting down and removing old offshore oil and gas infrastructure — is reshaping the sector's labour market. The musicians and environmental groups counter that the energy-security argument is hollow if the output is exported, and that the emissions cost is incompatible with the UK's stated climate trajectory.
Burnham's decision now sits with ministers who must weigh those competing claims. The consultation has closed. The signatories have made their position visible. What remains is whether the government treats the economic case as decisive or accepts the campaigners' argument that export-bound hydrocarbons do not constitute a domestic energy strategy.
The broader context here is one of a UK energy policy caught between its industrial legacy in the North Sea and legally binding emissions targets. The Rosebank and Jackdaw decisions are not isolated licensing choices; they function as a signal of how the government intends to reconcile near-term investment and job arguments with longer-range decarbonisation commitments. The involvement of high-profile musicians does not alter the regulatory calculus, but it does raise the political visibility of the decision at a moment when extreme heat is already testing public confidence in the government's climate posture.
