UK: Oil Refinery Capacity

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I agree with my noble friend. As I made clear in an earlier answer, the Government are looking not just at the current and immediate situation of Coryton but at our nation’s long-term refining needs—something that we are taking very seriously. So far as I can see, that did not happen in the years just before we came into government.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, has the work that was started under the previous Government on the resilience of fuel supplies—liquid natural gas and ordinary gas supplies—continued, bearing in mind that, for example, LNG supplies to the UK now account for 12 per cent of our energy requirements? That demands an LNG carrier delivering the gas about every two days, and we were working out resilience plans to accommodate such a supply being stopped, with other plants being available. Is that work continuing and, if so, where? It used to form part of the NRA but it seems to have disappeared.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I think I will have to write to the noble Lord on his specific question. However, I repeat my earlier point. At the moment, we have more capacity in this country for refined oil than we need. We are exporting more petrol than we are using, and we are importing more diesel than we are producing. Converting a petrol refinery to a diesel refinery would cost around $1 billion.