Russian Gas

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. It is about concentrating our minds. This issue has focused everybody’s minds. He is right that we need to do much more to press our partners. The G7 energy Ministers are meeting again in June to commit to immediate actions. Among those will be emergency plans for the winter of this year and we will be looking at how we can offer assistance to those countries that want to have greater dependency on their own natural sources.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, is not the Question of my noble friend Lord Higgins extremely timely given yesterday’s publication of a very important report by the Economic Affairs Committee? It made the point that the rapid and effective development of shale gas in this country is one of the real steps that we could take to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. Can we assume an early acceptance of the very important recommendations of this report?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. The report will be considered fully but we agree with my noble friend that shale gas will play a huge part if it can be explored properly and we get from it the full potential that we expect.