Energy: Oil Price Projections

Lord Desai Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend will be aware that this Government are keen to ensure that we have a good range of energy mixes, thereby reducing our usage of oil. However, we have a realistic view that, for the foreseeable future, we will still need extra supplies of oil and therefore we cannot mitigate our usage completely. We will of course try to make sure that, through our policies and the Energy Bill, all other energy resources have an equal footing to compete on.

[Lord Desai]

My Lords, have the Government taken into account the effect of shale gas in the US, which is likely to influence oil prices downwards, if anything?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, while I agree that prices in the US have come down, worldwide there is still great demand, given the emerging economies. For the foreseeable future, globally there will be a great need for oil and, by and large, prices will be seen to go up.