Russian Oil Import Ban

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am really delighted that the hon. Member raises this. I think he has raised it at every BEIS questions for the past 18 months, and I will keep saying what I have said before. We are interested in the technology, but I need to look at the specific proposals he is suggesting, and we obviously need to work out whether it is value for money. Those are the parameters we always look at.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

Yesterday at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we had a panel of experts talking about this very issue, and when the issue of fracking was raised, they were unanimous in their voice that it would be neither effective nor cost-efficient, would not do anything for the price and was actually a bit of a red herring. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that fracking is a red herring, and that we should instead focus for energy on more renewables and even more from the North sea, because fracking just does not work in this country?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think we can look at a range of technologies. We looked at the fracking issue—I was the Energy Minister at the time—and there were issues regarding the seismicity of various projects. However, we have always had an open mind, and we have always said, and I will repeat it, that we will support shale gas exploration if it can be done in a safe and sustainable way. We will be led by the science on whether this is indeed possible, so there are lots of experiments and empirical evidence that we need to consider.