Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Oxburgh and Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 7, 22 and 23 in this group. The main purpose of the Bill is the more efficient and effective management of the remaining resources in the North Sea, and it seems sensibly directed towards that end. However, it is important to remember, as others have touched on, that the Bill has enormous implications for the fledgling CCS industry. CCS is able to use the same infrastructure that was used for production and the same subsurface analysis, and it is important that it has access to those.

Before I go any further I should declare an interest as president of the Carbon Capture & Storage Association. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that I helped to establish this association around 10 years ago, just as I retired from Shell, because I saw no alternative to CCS—no other way of managing the emissions that were going to be produced by the continuing use of hydrocarbons over the coming decades, and avoiding the damaging climate change associated with those, unless we had something like CCS. For that reason, it is important that we bear this in mind today.

I hope that the Government will regard the amendments as helpful; they are certainly intended to be. Their main aim is to ensure that CCS is not inadvertently inhibited or prevented through the application of regulations and procedures that were not designed for those purposes. The Bill is based around the pre-existing Energy Act, by which CCS was not envisaged.

Amendment 7 is designed to remind the OGA that, over time, its priorities may change. The OGA is primarily staffed by people whose backgrounds are in a variety of aspects of hydrocarbon exploration, production, management and regulation. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that CCS is not at the forefront of their thinking. It is quite important that this should be made clear, and that is what the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, does.

Amendments 22 and 23 are both intended to ensure that practitioners of CCS have the appropriate standing and access in order to operate efficiently and effectively when doing their business. It is apparent from the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and other noble Lords that this concern is fairly widely held. Had this debate not been held today there might have been much more opportunity for Members with such concerns to consult with each other, with officials and with Ministers and we might well have ended up with fewer and more coherent amendments. We are where we are, but this is a real concern.

Given that CCS is a central plank in the Government’s energy strategy I hope that they will view these amendments positively. The amendments can certainly be improved and if the same objectives can be achieved in a more efficient way, I and, I am sure, others would be very happy to discuss this matter with Ministers and officials.

My final point is a trivial one in one sense but not in another. The Bill refers in a number of places to existing legislation—earlier energy Bills. It would be enormously helpful if officials preparing Explanatory Notes, who must have immersed themselves in the existing legislation, were able to include links in the Explanatory Notes to the online sources where that existing legislation can be found. We could all save a great deal of time and probably quite a lot of paper by following such links directly.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not delay the House long because what I wanted to say has been said much more eloquently by my noble friend Lady Worthington and by the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Oxburgh. To echo the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, giving us some indication of the reference points in previous energy legislation really would make life a lot easier for all of us.

My primary point is that this is an opportunity for some lateral thinking. For those of us who have been listening to the trailers for Jim Naughtie’s programme about the North Sea over a period of 40 to 50 years of exploration, it is astonishing to recognise the change that has taken place just in the past two to five years, or slightly longer. The major change has been that many of the larger oil companies have reduced their footprint in the North Sea and we have seen the entry of a number of independents. As the Wood report set out the case for setting up a regime of collaboration, it is important to bear in mind that for the independents, who are competitors one with another, it can be harder to get that degree of co-operation at the moment, when the North Sea is becoming more difficult. So would it not make sense to review where we are in a year’s time to make sure that we do not have to have yet another energy Bill before both Houses? The change is phenomenal, and we must be prepared for it at every opportunity.

I greatly admire the work of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on carbon capture and storage. It is the holy grail for this country, which has so much fossil fuel. I am very concerned about the environmental impact of the continuing use of fossil fuels, but I am also concerned about security of supply issues. The flexibility that fossil fuels can give us when there is a potential security of supply crisis is very important, and we will take a lot of the sting out of the tail if we have operational carbon capture and storage.

This is not a political issue—it should not be a partisan issue across this House. This is a common-sense group of amendments that allows us a bit of lateral thinking and allows us to make legislation at a time when considerable change is still going on, not just in the UK continental shelf but across the energy industry.