Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

The noble Lord poses some interesting questions. He knows as well as I do that BP is a $100-billion company with a $35-billion cash flow—even after the recent reduction in its share price. It is in a strong balance-sheet position to suffer the losses from this horrendous disaster. The noble Lord may also know that BP pays its dividend quarterly, unlike many corporations. The BP board has agreed, and is committed, to a review of that position before 27 July and we are in that period. The noble Lord would not expect me to comment on criminal proceedings, would he? I am afraid that that is a matter for the law courts, not me. Doubtless we will follow the issue with interest. As regards the Government, I admire the way that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, has handled this matter; he has dealt with it in a calm and steady dialogue, rather than volatile rhetoric. In these circumstances, we have to be very careful to follow that path, because there is an awful lot at stake, as I hope I mentioned in the Statement.

[Lord Redesdale]

My Lords, will regulation of novel technologies be looked at? The disaster happened at the very limits of the technical abilities that we are considering, and other technologies are particularly worrying. The development of unconventional gas fields, using geological processes which have not been tried or tested, could cause untold damage. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will look very carefully at unconventional gas. I hope that he will also recognise that many of us have been impressed by President Obama’s level-headed approach, considering the view taken by the British press. We are not talking about a disaster just in cash terms; this disaster could lead to the extinction of a number of species. The brown pelican may well be brought to the edge of extinction. If an American company had brought about such a disaster—although I am not saying that BP alone brought it about—in the North Sea, the political pressure from the press to point the finger of blame would be extremely strong. In the light of such enormous pressure, the attitude of the American President is to be commended.

[Lord Marland]

I thank the noble Lord, my coalition colleague, for his kind remarks. I was rather heartened by the recent pictures that I saw in the papers of the effort being put in to saving the pelicans, although I do not know how true they are, because you can never believe everything you see in pictures. That effort has been paid for by someone, and I suspect that BP has a strong hand in ensuring that it takes place, because it is deeply committed to restoring the Gulf to where it was. New technologies will of course be looked at carefully. This demonstrates that the world is searching high and low for carbon-intensive energy, and we are moving towards scraping the barrel. As I said earlier, we have to accelerate our low-carbon development because this is a massive environmental wake-up call, so of course we will be looking at the new technology.

As I also said earlier, I think that the rhetoric and conversation between President Obama and our Prime Minister was exactly what one would want to hear following this recent tragedy, in that it was calm, sensible and not inflammatory, as has been reported. That is what is required in solving any problem.