Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

That the House do now resolve itself into a Committee upon the Bill.

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly before the House commences Committee to raise a very serious objection and concern that relates to the Bill. At present we do not have the impact assessment for the Bill, which we were promised before our deliberations began, and they begin now. I would like to hear from the Minister why this delay has happened—in fact, why the Bill was not published with an impact assessment in the first place. I also seek assurances that when the impact assessment is published, it will contain full details of the assumptions on which the Bill is based. Namely, there is the Government’s continued assertion that we are on track to meet our renewables targets, which relates to Part 4. That is incredibly important and sensitive, since we have had many representations from industry about the impact of the Bill. It should be recalled that those elements of the Bill were not subject to public consultation, so the impact assessment is incredibly important for us to be able to consider the impact of the Bill. The other assumption that the Government now seem often to quote is that the levy control framework is spent and there is no more money left. We need to see details of those assumptions and the figures that underlie them but we do not have an impact assessment. I am very concerned about this issue and I look forward to a response from the Minister.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I should like to say a word in support of my noble friend Lady Worthington because this is not just an isolated example of the Government treating this House, and Parliament, in a cavalier fashion. If I may give another example, next week we were due to have a debate on English votes for English laws. It was promised again and again by the Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—I notice that she has disappeared—yet it has been switched. We are to have a debate on the size of the House, which is not an immediately urgent matter, yet the Commons will make a decision at some point about English votes for English laws and we were given the assurance that we would be able to feed into that. My understanding—I hope that the Chief Whip will answer this—is that the decision to move the debate on English votes for English laws off the agenda for next week was taken unilaterally by the Government and that when the Opposition were consulted, we said that we did not want to change. We wanted to have the English votes for English laws debate because it was promised to this House. That is another example of the cavalier way in which the Government treat this House, wanting to bulldoze their business through. It is about time that some people in this House stood up and said that Parliament has a responsibility to challenge the Government. The Leader of the House may think that we should come in only one day a week when we want to say a few words but we are here to hold the Government to account.

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Moved by

[Baroness Worthington]

1: Clause 2, page 2, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State shall, within one year from the date of coming into force of this section, undertake an assessment of the fitness for purpose of the OGA’s powers in relation to relevant activities, and shall lay before each House of Parliament a report of the findings.”

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and for chasing the impact assessment. Can I take it that the full impact assessment will be published tomorrow, or will it be just the oil and gas part? Perhaps he could clarify that point for me.

Looking at Clause 2, our Amendment 1 is essentially a probing amendment but it is intended to enable us to debate this part of the Bill. At Second Reading, several noble Lords raised the fact that things are changing fast in the North Sea and in the oil and gas sector more generally. We have an undertaking to implement the findings of the Wood review and I am sure the cross-party consensus on that remains strong. However, the Wood review was published in June 2013. Here we are in September 2015 and the pace of change since that date has been quite remarkable.

We are seeing a steady decline in North Sea production. Outputs of oil and gas are already around 40% lower than in 2010 and lower than at any time since 1977. The first quarter of this year marked the seventh consecutive month in which the UK has been a net importer of petroleum, after having been a net exporter since 1984. The figures for 2014 show that the oil and gas sector as a whole lost £5.2 billion—its worst figure since the 1970s—and total revenues were lower than at any time since 1998 at £24 billion. I quote these figures, which were sourced from DECC’s own analysis, to highlight how things are changing in this sector and in the North Sea specifically.

The other new element is that decommissioning is now a reality and is starting to incur costs. There was a feeling a few years ago that decommissioning was the beginning of the end. Now it is being seen as the beginning of a new industry and there is considerable decommissioning activity going on, not least because many of these assets have been in place for decades, perhaps well beyond their imagined timespan. They are therefore reaching the end of their usable lives, even if we wished to keep using them. The purpose of the amendment, then, is to ask for a report to Parliament on the fitness of the powers now being created for the OGA. We have suggested that it should be produced within six months but we do not have a fixed view; a year would be equally fine. However, we must make sure that we set off on the creation of this new quango or arm’s-length body with the right set of objectives.

We will debate amendments later today where we will talk more about the need to update the objectives, particularly in relation to the storage and transportation of waste greenhouse gases. It seems clear that, as we look at the implications of climate change, which are now uncontested—I think it is settled that we need to decarbonise our energy systems—that will change the economics of all fossil fuel activity. If we are to meet our targets, either we will be forced to decarbonise our use of fossil fuels using CCS or we will see a drastic reduction in the demand for those products. Either of those has significant implications for the UK economy and for the oil and gas sector, hence the desire to table an amendment that enables us to have this debate and to require that the OGA be kept up to date with the most recent developments in this sector.

As I have said, oil and gas prices have fallen and there seems to be no sign of their coming back up again any time soon—of course these prices fluctuate but this now seems to be a systemic drop—so we must have a body with the right remit and objectives to do the job of making sure that, while we maximise the economic return from the North Sea, we accept that this may not be solely through the recovery of hydrocarbons but might, of necessity, require a completely new industry that not only extracts hydrocarbons but returns the waste gases to under the sea. We are blessed with a natural repository for many billions of tonnes of waste greenhouse gases, which I am certain we will need if we want to keep the costs of decarbonisation under control and ensure that we are decarbonising cost-effectively.

I shall speak also to Amendment 3 in this group. Amendment 1 requires a report to be made on the fitness of purpose of these powers, but Amendment 3 is more specific and seeks to change the primary objectives of the OGA to include CO₂ transportation and storage. It would negate the need for many of the subsequent amendments that we will talk about today because it would bring about a high-level change which would mean that we would not have to catch lots of subsequent clauses and add references to CCS and storage and transportation to the powers being taken here. Many amendments that we will come to today relate to how, as drafted, there is reference back to the principal objective of the Bill and the fact that currently that principal objective does not include the transportation and storage of CO_2. Therefore, many of the amendments are trying to reinsert it. We could take another approach, such as the one set out in Amendment 3, which is simply to change the primary objective. There is merit in our discussing that, particularly as CCS offers a lifeline for the future development of hydrocarbon use in the UK by being able largely to decarbonise our use of those fuels.

CCS is essential in that it will enable us to keep using hydrocarbons but, as I alluded to earlier, it is equally important to keeping the costs of decarbonisation contained. At the global level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that if we do not have CCS on a global scale, we are likely to see the costs of decarbonisation being double what they would be otherwise, while in the UK the Energy Technologies Institute has estimated that without CCS, by 2050 the costs of decarbonising to reach our targets could be in the order of £40 billion to £50 billion a year more than if CCS is deployed.

This is an important and timely subject. We are seeing projects in the UK moving forward to deployment to enable us to make use of the North Sea. I am sure that the OGA will say, “We would rather have our remit nice and narrow; please leave us alone”. That is fine, but we are moving to a time when the social contract between the citizens and taxpayers of the UK and the offshore oil and gas operators is changing. The oil and gas industry largely used to get on with what it was doing—delivering us rather nice, large sources of tax revenue—and everyone was happy. That is shifting. The revenues are falling, as we have seen in recent years, decommissioning costs are rising and the OGA itself, as we will come to debate later this afternoon, will potentially receive public funding to go about its business. This is no longer purely a commercially focused sector and it requires government to intervene to help it. It has the opportunity to receive public funding—the oil and gas operators already receive generous tax breaks that enable them to offset their decommissioning costs. The social licence between us, the citizens of the UK, and the offshore oil and gas operators is shifting. We need to make sure that the OGA reflects that change of balance and takes on a role fit for the 21st century.

We should always consider very carefully when we create new public sector costs. The Government have pointed out on numerous occasions that we are living through a time of austerity, and it seems a bit strange that we should be creating a new area of public spending here without requiring this to be a comprehensive body that takes into account a whole range of views and issues and keeps pace with current events. As good as it was, the Wood review—which I am sure will continue to receive cross-Bench support—is over two years old, and two years has been shown to be quite a long time in the oil and gas sector, hence the need for these two amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I beg to move.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I will say a few words in support of the spirit, at any rate, of this amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I declare an interest as chairman of the Windsor Energy Group, adviser to various energy companies, as in the register, and president of the Energy Industries Council. As the noble Baroness has rightly said, this is a sensible requirement for the future because, as she has also said, the North Sea is a mature province and the industry is clearly undergoing huge change—probably the biggest period of change since the 1970s and early 1980s. Most of the talk in the industry at the moment is about the impact of the halving of the oil price. Even in this morning’s papers, we see some pronouncements by experts on the possibility of whole areas of the North Sea shutting down unless completely new arrangements and management structures can be devised to cope with the new situation.

Obviously, behind this lies the question of whether the price will stay down. My own view is that, barring high-impact events like huge new political upheavals beyond the ones we already have in the Middle East, there will be no obvious bounceback in the price for a very long time. People talk as though the OPEC countries had some choice of policy—they could just cut production and the price would go up. Well of course that would not happen. They have lost control of the price. Russia has no intention of co-operating, and the shale industry in America, although there have been a few bankruptcies, will come back again and increase production as soon as the price rises. So the OPEC countries would gain nothing. Iran of course may be coming on stream as well. All this means that the industry in the North Sea is now facing a period when, on the supply side, there will be a lot more oil. On the demand side, there will probably be rather flat demand, whether from China, from Japan—which is going back to nuclear so will not need so much—or, indeed, from the United States or us, where the demand for oil is flat or even falling.

This is a completely new management challenge. We must have some reassurance, at least in a year’s time but preferably from the start, that the new regulatory authority—the OGA, with its expanded powers into a separate agency, as is now proposed—has the facilities, opportunities and abilities to manage completely new requirements. We have to see a province that is going to adapt to low prices, that develops completely new opportunities and new technologies, not unrelated to the points made by the noble Baroness about the possible disposal of carbon dioxide through CCS techniques, and that learns from other countries. Norway in particular may have a lesson or two for us on how to maintain a mature province and develop new opportunities at sea.

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[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank my noble friend. I do not want to give a figure on the hoof; I am sure noble Lords would appreciate that that would be dangerous. We can look at this clearly between now and Report. If we are going to have a review we will have to say when it should take place. I would not anticipate coming back without a definitive idea of that.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, which has demonstrated the breadth of opinion and the cross-party consensus on the need for the Bill to be amended to ensure that carbon capture and storage—or certainly the storage and transportation elements of it—is on the face of the Bill, for the avoidance of all doubt. On these Benches, we will not be content for the Bill to leave this House without that issue being addressed. That said, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I look forward to sitting down and engaging in the discussions he offered with officials and interested parties to see if we can come to an agreement on the review period for the legislation and the objective of the OGA. I understand the points that have been made, but if you create a body that has licensing powers over the storage of CO₂, which may well involve itself in meetings in relation to storage and transportation and which may be charging fees, how can this all be possible unless its primary objective includes a reference to that? The potential for judicial reviews or objections from industry would be much wider if we do not make it crystal clear from the outset that this is what we intend the OGA to do. The noble Lord has referenced the fact that this will be self-financing, but government amendments to be tabled today would mean that public money was potentially being given to the OGA. I reiterate that we will not be content unless something appears on the face of the Bill, but I look forward to sitting down with the Minister and his officials and, on that basis, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Oxburgh]

I join the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, in thanking those who have participated in the debate and the Minister for his reply. I have one final question for him. Have the officials in his department conducted a study of how the Bill might impact CCS? There are serious questions there: if they have not done that, could they do so? It would be extremely useful as a lead-in to the next stage.

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[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, Amendments 1A to 1F and Amendment 43 seek to amend the Schedule to the Bill to make amendments to other Acts and the Title of the Bill. Because the power for the Oil and Gas Authority to charge fees is provided for in Amendment 16, Amendments 1A to 1D are required. In particular, we amend the power to charge in Section 188 of the Energy Act 2004 and remove some other powers to charge fees. This illustrates the points that were made about the need for a destination table.

Amendment 1E amends the Schedule to insert a definition of the Oil and Gas Authority into the Energy Act 2011. This is consequential on government Amendments 33 and 34 relating to access to upstream petroleum infrastructure and on the transfer of functions to the Oil and Gas Authority in relation to access to upstream petroleum infrastructure. Amendment 1F amends the Schedule to remove the levy provisions from Section 42 and Schedule 7 of the Infrastructure Act 2015. These will be set out with amendments to this Bill—noble Lords should see Amendments 17 and 18—so that those using the legislation can find all the Oil and Gas Authority provisions in one place. I hope that that is helpful.

Amendment 43 amends the Title to include,

“to make provision about rights to use upstream petroleum infrastructure”,

in consequence to Amendments 35 and 36, which insert new clauses on this topic. I beg to move.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, as these are largely technical amendments bringing into line various pieces of legislation, I have no real objection and we support the government amendments.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for that.

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Moved by

[Baroness Worthington]

2: After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“Report to Parliament on decommissioning costs
Within one year of this Act coming into force, and annually thereafter, the Secretary of State shall report to each House of Parliament on estimated decommissioning costs for North Sea oil and gas infrastructure.”

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 2 and 9. Amendment 2 is the requirement on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on an annual basis on the,

“estimated decommissioning costs for North Sea oil and gas infrastructure”.

This amendment has been tabled because an important facet of this debate is that the costs involved are hugely important, which the Minister mentioned earlier. Decommissioning is under way, it is likely to increase over time and we will see bits of infrastructure being removed, which will cause considerable costs to be borne. The upside is that we may well be about to invent a wonderful new industry in which we can get a global lead. The engineering excellence that we have demonstrated in the North Sea will be repurposed and we will apply that knowledge and expertise to the task of decommissioning, which I am sure will stand us in good stead both here and overseas.

However, through the course of my engagement with this Bill, it has come to light that those decommissioning costs will now partly fall on the taxpayer. The Treasury produced an estimate of the costs of decommissioning and how much will be expected to be a burden on the taxpayer. In the five years from now until 2020, HMRC estimates that something in the region of £9 billion will be expended, half of which will fall on the taxpayer. That is not an insubstantial amount of money, particularly as we hear, in the context of energy, an awful lot is made of the cost of the renewables subsidies and the green energy contracts. A levy control framework is applied to those costs. But here we have a liability on the taxpayer for essentially finishing off the job in the North Sea and assisting the oil and gas sector in bearing those costs.

Those costs are quite generous and the way in which they are calculated is that tax can be claimed back through the petroleum revenue tax, the PRT, and the ring-fenced corporation tax, the RFCT. Both provisions are very generous and enable costs to be claimed dating back throughout the time of the activity. They allow the use of retrospective taxation that has been paid to claim tax back against decommissioning costs. This evidently means a loss of revenue to the Exchequer, and therefore extra pressure on taxpayers to make up the difference somewhere else.

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[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment and my noble friend Lord Howell for his comments. Without wishing to be too much of a doomsayer, I appreciate that there is always the chance of any business going into bankruptcy or company going into insolvency. The legal position is that decommissioning costs are picked up by industry under the Petroleum Act 1998—and industry does, of course, get tax relief.

I will address the noble Baroness’s points on Amendments 2 and 9. Minimising the costs of decommissioning in the North Sea to both industry and the taxpayer will be a central focus of the new legislative landscape. It is essential that we create an environment that encourages collaboration and co-operation in order to bring down overall costs. The reuse of viable North Sea infrastructure is a top priority for the Oil and Gas Authority. As I outlined earlier, the Wood review suggested that the Office of Carbon Capture and Storage would work closely with the Oil and Gas Authority in moving this forward. That, indeed, is what is happening in line with the recommendations made by Sir Ian Wood in his review.

That said, I understand the thrust of what is being said and can confirm that decommissioning is high on the Government’s agenda. Obviously there are costs associated with it and it is essential that we do it in the most cost-effective way, bringing in the possibility of reusing decommissioned sites in relation to CCS. I hope that noble Lords have had a letter indicating that the Government will bring forward amendments on decommissioning on Report. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to bring them forward earlier, but it is my intention that these amendments will address the issues of decommissioning costs and the viable reuse of infrastructure in the North Sea. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment. I look forward to debating decommissioning in more detail on Report when government amendments on these issues will be brought forward.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for his clarification. He is absolutely correct that, obviously, over a longer time period we will incur higher costs. I thank the Minister for his response. Possibly I did get the letter about the decommissioning amendments. I have to confess it has been a rather chaotic last few weeks so I will look again in my inbox. I would welcome that and I think that this issue must be addressed in the Bill. It is clearly a subject that we are going to see a lot of parliamentary time devoted to. Could the Minister write to me or give me clarification, as soon as possible, about the nature of the liability that taxpayers will face and about any safeguards that will be put in place to prevent it becoming an unlimited liability?

I notice from the industry side that the tax breaks that were granted have been underwritten by private law contracts to avoid any reverses being introduced by subsequent Governments. That seems to be quite a nice safeguard for the industry. As we know, Finance Bills are famous for being quite changeable. In fact, we saw quite a shift from the 2011 Budget where what were described as disastrous tax regimes brought in for the oil and gas sector were rapidly reversed and changed over subsequent Finance Bills. Therefore, one can see why the industry is keen to have these things underwritten and uses private law contracts now for those tax breaks. However, where are the reassurances for the public purse that this will not be a ballooning cost for us over decades to come?

I understand that it should be the industry that pays, but it does receive tax breaks, which amounts to a subsidy from the public purse. However, on the basis that there are amendments coming forward and that we will have another opportunity to debate decommissioning in full, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for introducing her amendment. I shall speak to amendments also in this group: Amendments 5, 6, 8, 20 and 21 in my name and Amendments 4, 10 and 11 in the names of my noble friends Lord Whitty and Lord Grantchester. This could be described as another pot pourri of amendments. I echo the noble Lords who mentioned that, had we had a bit more time and not been caught trying to table all our amendments in the last week of the Recess, we might have come forward with a slightly different grid with different groupings. However, we are where we are. What all these amendments have in common is that they relate to Clauses 4 and 9, which set out the core functions of the OGA and—Clause 9 in particular—the matters to which the OGA should have regard.

I do not intend to go over again the importance of CCS and the need to facilitate development of storage and transportation, as we have obviously rehearsed those arguments. However, if we do not change the primary objective, as set out in the Petroleum Act and amended by the Infrastructure Act, we will probably have to amend the Bill in numerous other places to ensure that CCS is properly taken into account. Clauses 4 and 9 are two places where we would expect something in the Bill to reassure us that this will be taken with due seriousness, and that the OGA will have the right legal backing needed to do its job properly.

Amendment 4, which is in my noble friend Lord Whitty’s name, refers to the need for decarbonisation strategies. Having spoken to him, I know that the purpose of probing on this is that it is absolutely clear that, as we face climate change and start to absorb the implications of what we need to do, there is a great need for a holistic view of our pursuit and extraction of hydrocarbons. We are either going to change drastically our demand for hydrocarbons by moving into other sources of energy, or we will be capturing and storing the waste gases and putting them somewhere where they are not released into the atmosphere. I think both have quite profound implications and it is right that the OGA must have regard to the meeting of climate change targets and carbon budgets, and to the need for decarbonisation of energy. This is meant to be a Bill for the 21st century, not for the last century. Therefore, if we are to list specific areas to which the OGA must have regard, it would seem odd if climate change mitigation and decarbonisation were not specifically mentioned.

Amendment 5, which is in my name, is, as I said, an alternate way of ensuring that geological carbon storage is included within the matters to which the OGA has regard. Amendment 6 is similar to Amendment 4 in that it asks for consideration of the Climate Change Act and the targets within it.

We then turn to Amendment 10, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Whitty and refers to energy efficiency. I think I am right to say that my noble friend would have preferred to write a wider amendment about energy efficiency in general, because that is a long-held area of great interest to him. There is certainly a need for any energy Bill to consider the role of demand reduction and energy efficiency but, as the scope of this Bill is relatively narrow as it stands, this amendment relates to increasing energy efficiency within the areas of extraction of oil and gas, as related to the OGA. Amendment 11 relates to carbon capture and storage policy again.

The last two amendments in this group, Amendments 20 and 21, relate to Clause 9. They seek to make sure that the interpretations in the Bill are sufficiently clear that when we talk about licensees and operators, and data sharing and meetings—all the various powers being given to the OGA—we know it is explicit that those powers include those activities that relate to CCS. As I say, this could be made a whole lot simpler if we were to change the primary objectives but it seems that there are many ways of skinning this particular cat, and many of them are presented here today. That is the purpose of tabling these amendments and I look forward to the Minister’s responses to these matters relating to Clauses 4 and 9.

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, on the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, particularly regarding climate change, carbon-reduction targets and energy efficiency. I compliment the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on trying to get energy efficiency into the Bill because it is something that he, I and others on all energy Bills have tried to make the Government look seriously at always including. If we are concerned about reducing demand, which is another area we had to pursue energetically in the previous Energy Bill, we need to look at this if we are to meet a lot of the targets we have signed up to, not only in Europe but internationally. I support the thrust behind this and I admire the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for getting energy efficiency into the Bill.

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That said, as I have indicated previously in relation to other amendments, we are happy to sit down and look at how the whole CCS issue dovetails with the Oil and Gas Authority, because we have a shared interest across the House in ensuring that we maximise the important role of the CCS industry in helping us to decarbonise and reach the targets that we need to reach. I respectfully ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Worthington]

Before the Minister sits down, although I thought that we had been making quite good progress in this debate in recognising the need to address the OGA’s powers in relation to CCS, I felt that the comments in response to this amendment seemed to be very narrow in their interpretation of what we are going to be considering before Report. I reiterate that our not moving the amendments in this group does not preclude the fact that we want a full and deep discussion about which of those OGA powers need to be amended to address CCS. As we will come on to discuss, that will involve access to meetings, information samples and a whole raft of things that will be needed to facilitate CCS. Although I will not be moving those amendments, I reiterate that we should not be sliding back and we should be looking at the whole issue holistically before Report.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention. I am happy to do that, as I have indicated, but I do not want to give the impression—I do not want to commit us to this—that we are undermining the focus of the Oil and Gas Authority, which is to maximise the economic return from the North Sea.