Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I think it fundamentally misunderstands the energy market. When we cannot get Norwegian gas and when we have made the most of all of our gas, what is the marginal gas that we use? It is LNG, which produces emissions four times higher than the gas we can produce here. If we produce less UK gas, we will need more LNG.

Coming back to what is a really critical part of the Bill—the workers—a recent report from Robert Gordon University found that a faster decline in our oil and gas sector, which the Opposition are proposing, could halve the workforce by 2030, leading to a significant loss of skills for the future energy sector. Those are the workers whose skills we will need for our future energy production. The same report found that over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have skills that are transferable to the offshore renewables sector. However, if we do not manage that transition correctly—everybody in the Chamber today agrees that we need to transition—we will lose those very important workers and their skills. It is the same people who are working on oil and gas rigs today who we will need on the offshore wind farms of tomorrow: our subsea installation engineers who lay cables, our technicians who remotely operate subsea vehicles, our divers, our project managers, and our engineering specialists servicing our offshore rigs. Those are all essential oil and gas jobs that we know will be critical in the roll-out of our low-carbon technologies. If we do not protect our world-leading specialists, we will see communities decimated, and ultimately a skills exodus that would put at risk the very transition that we are working so hard to achieve.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful point about both energy security and getting those jobs—those British jobs. Recently, I visited the Falkland Islands with a cross-party delegation, and when we met the Falkland Islands Government, they said that they are desperate to unlock the Sea Lion oilfield and to get British workers to operate that field—obviously, the Falkland Islands is a British overseas territory—yet they are being stymied by the UK Treasury, which will not underwrite it. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the next thing we should do is back overseas territories by developing their oilfields, so that we can have good British overseas territories oil and gas in the UK and British jobs in the overseas territories, and support our one big happy Commonwealth and overseas territories family?

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[Edward Miliband]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what we would do. I am really grateful to him for intervening, but I am sorry he has lengthened my speech. We would establish a national wealth fund to invest in British jobs to give a future in steel and automotive, and to invest in our ports. We would set up GB Energy to generate wealth for our citizens. If it is good enough for countries abroad, why is it not good enough for us? We would insulate homes across the country. We would finally lift the disgraceful onshore wind ban that is adding £180 to every family’s bills. That is just the start. I do not want to detain the House for too long, but there is plenty more where that came from.

[Alexander Stafford]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Edward Miliband]

I will not give way.

The truth is that there are two roads for Britain’s future: driving to clean energy by 2030 to cut bills and make us energy independent, and GB Energy to bring jobs in clean energy here at home and be a climate leader; or a Government who take the wrong path, cling to expensive and insecure fossil fuels, and make the British people pay the price, as they have for the past 14 years. The truth is that the Bill speaks volumes about a Government out of ideas and embarked on that second path. The Bill is one of the last desperate acts of a dying Government. I urge the House to support our reasoned amendment and vote against the Bill tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dave Doogan]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman’s ambitions on the energy charter treaty. It is about time that the Government got off the fence on the issue and made a decision.

On job security, let us be clear that this Government care for oil and gas workers in Scotland every bit as much as they cared for the miners and the manufacturing workers in Scotland who were put to the sword in the 1980s, every bit as much as they care for our service personnel living in squalor, every bit as much as they care about the Post Office staff thrown into the privatisation mincer, and every bit as much as they care for junior doctors in England.

[Alexander Stafford]

On my previous intervention, I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests on my Falkland Islands trip paid for by the Falkland Islands Government.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the miners. In Rother Valley we were hit hard by the closure of the mines, which is why we need a transition. Keeping the new licences going will make the transition slightly longer and keep more people in work. Surely it is a good thing to diminish the negative impact that net zero will sometimes have on certain people.

[Dave Doogan]

The premise of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention is that by delaying things, and maximising oil and gas production, we somehow maintain this link. We could just as easily deliver the same thing by accelerating the delivery of renewable energy and the infrastructure to transmit it to where it is needed. That would have the added benefit of introducing lower bills for consumers and industry, and making sure that we are not reliant on petrostates from far away with questionable regimes. I am looking through the right end of the telescope, whereas the hon. Gentleman and his Government are looking through the wrong end.

In short, the Tories could not give a flying fig for any worker on these islands—as long as their share price remains healthy, to hang with the rest of us. If the question is “How do we protect and transition oil and gas jobs into renewable energy production?”, the answer is definitely not to overstimulate unlimited offshore petroleum licensing. According to industry data, 441,000 jobs were supported by the oil and gas sector in 2013, but that number has already fallen to 215,000—so we are talking about 200,000 fewer jobs in 2022. The Government have issued approximately 400 new drilling licences, in five separate licensing rounds, in that period. The claim that there is a direct and proportionate relationship between the amount of licences issued and the amount of jobs sustained is entirely spurious.