The chief executive of Adura has called on government and regulators to green-light Jackdaw and Rosebank ( The Times )

Both fields are in limbo, undergoing fresh environmental assessments after Greenpeace and Uplift won challenges on emissions grounds. Opred will now decide.

First, who Adura actually is. The name is new launched December 2025 but the owners are not. Adura is a 50/50 joint venture between Shell and Equinor, headquartered here in Aberdeen, holding the old Shell and Equinor UK assets:

Shearwater, Mariner, Clair, Rosebank, Jackdaw. It is, on paper, the North Sea's largest independent producer. In practice, it's two majors under one roof.

McCulloch's argument is not the one his critics expect.

He didn't frame approval against the energy transition. He framed it as the way to fund and deliver it. Billions in tax revenue for schools, the NHS, defence. Less reliance on imported oil and gas which, he notes, often arrives at higher emissions intensity than the molecules we produce ourselves. Pursue the transition, in his words, in an economically serious way.

That is the managed transition argument, made by the man running the assets.

And note the timing. McCulloch spoke to The Times days after the Scottish Conservatives took Aberdeen South from the SNP the first Westminster by-election they've won in over half a century.

The Times itself links the result to the party's vow to back oil and gas.

Douglas Lumsden didn't win that seat on climate policy. He won it on jobs, on supply chain, on a city that has watched the rhetoric of transition arrive long before the replacement work did.