Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you were not around at the time, but you will know that the stone age did not end because of a lack of stone, and the oil age will not end because of a lack of oil. It will end because decent people of all political persuasions, such as the former right hon. Member for Kingswood, are farsighted enough to recognise and brave enough to stand up against the vested interests that would consign our children and the natural world to a costly, disruptive and, frankly, terrifying future. He was right to say that history will judge harshly those who continue down the reckless fossil fuel path that this Bill represents.

This Bill is founded upon a lie—in fact, several lies. The Government say it will safeguard our domestic energy supplies and boost investment; it will not. They say it will enhance our energy security and reduce our dependence on imports from overseas; it will not. The truth is that it is a political distraction that will reduce investment in and delay our transition to the clean energy that is the only sustainable and secure future both for our country and for the global community. This Bill is not a credible plan to fix Britain’s broken energy system; it is a sad attempt to sew division and polarise our politics. It shows that the Government have given up governing and are out of step with the British people’s priorities. When 6 million people live in fuel poverty and when 4,700 people died last winter as a result of living in cold, damp homes, this Bill falls well below what our constituents deserve.

As the world’s hottest year on record was concluding, nearly 200 countries agreed at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels. The contrast between the promise made in Dubai and what the Government seek to do today could not be more profound, nor more depressing. By inviting Parliament to enable annual licensing rounds for offshore oil and gas extraction, the Government are failing to understand that to transition away from fossil fuels, we have to stop producing them. The Government argue, “But it is still a declining field.” “This simply slows the rate of decline,” they say. The problem is that it also slows the rate of investment in a just transition that will unleash the power of wind, solar, tidal and energy efficiency.

The North sea is a declining basin. Its reserves are predominantly oil, not gas. Between now and 2050, new licences are expected to provide just 103 days of gas, which is four days of gas on average each year. The Government know that once oil and gas is licensed, it belongs to the companies that hold the licence. As the Government recently admitted to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), 80% of UK oil reserves are sent abroad by these companies and sold on the international market to the highest bidder. No wonder the former executive director of BP said last year that the Government’s decision to expand North sea drilling is

“not going to make any difference”

to Britain’s energy security.

If the Government’s ambition is to minimise gas imports, there is a very simple solution—insulate homes. The best way to cut imports is to reduce domestic fossil fuel consumption by building renewables and insulating homes. This would have the additional benefit of reducing people’s energy bills and tackling fuel poverty. By channelling investment into oil and gas, the Government are heading precisely in the wrong direction. I do not deny that there is a role for existing oil and gas, but it is in the journey to a clean energy economy. What there is not a role for is the production of new oil and gas. We already know that to stand a 50% chance of keeping below the 1.5° threshold, 90% of the world’s coal reserves and 60% of oil and gas reserves would have to stay in the ground.

[David Duguid]

Is the hon. Member aware of this? He mentioned the pathway to the 1.5° target, and the IEA’s description of what is required is a 3% to 4% reduction in oil and gas production year on year between now and 2050. Does he agree with the assessment of the NSTA itself, which expects that, even with the new oil and gas licences, North sea oil and gas is predicted to decline by 7%, or twice that amount?

[Barry Gardiner]

I am well aware of that—of course I am—but the hon. Member will have heard the discussion that took place earlier about global leadership. He will know that other countries around the world are not declining at the required rate, and leadership is about taking a lead.

The logic of drilling for more when the world has already more than it can safely burn is that of the myopic salesman, not the visionary politician, or to use the Prime Minister’s words, it is the logic of the zealot. The Government’s actions are already making the UK a less attractive place for green investment. Three quarters of all North sea oil and gas operators currently invest nothing at all in UK renewables. The largest operator, Harbour Energy, has ruled out such clean investment altogether, yet last year the five oil super-majors—BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies—rewarded their investors with record payouts of more than £79 billion, so we know the money is there to do it.

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

The Minister is asking whether I will give way. The right hon. Member has long confused the scoring of party political points with the ability to debate an issue to arrive at the truth and get decent policies out the other end. However, if he has changed the habit of a lifetime, I will happily give way to him.

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. He mentioned a specific company, Harbour Energy, and it is absolutely investing in the Viking carbon capture centre and playing a positive role. That is true of the whole oil and gas supply chain in this country, which the hon. Gentleman, if he went to visit them, would find are working right across the energy sector. Weakening one part, as he would with no new licences, would damage the new clean emerging sectors, too.

[Barry Gardiner]

I recognise the work that Harbour Energy is doing and I also recognise the work that the Government have done in trying to attract more investment into green energy and renewables, and I welcome that work. I want us to have a cross-party consensus around getting to net zero. The trouble is that—and the Minister knows this to be true—he and many people on his side, including the Prime Minister, have tried to make this a wedge issue, a political issue to divide people. I think he really does need to step up to the plate. If he wants cross-party consensus, he has to try to build it, not score cheap political points.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The Liberal Democrats were actually introducing an amendment to stop flaring and venting of methane. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) has just said it would be a very good thing to do yet the Government opposed it. That is an example of where we could have reached cross-party consensus.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct, and I listened to her attempt to intervene on the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon). We need to build a cross-party consensus and this shows how it can be achieved: there are concerned Members on the Government Benches who want to do the right thing, and we all know that sometimes the Whips make sure that they do not, but if we really build this consensus, we can get to the right place.

Another lie at the heart of this Bill is to say it will protect British jobs. It will not. Over the years there have been hundreds of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas sector and its supply chain. They have kept our lights on and our industry moving for decades just as the coalminers did before them. But pretending that employment in oil and gas can last forever fails to properly prepare those workers and their families for the inevitable transition that the world is making.

Despite sustained support for the North sea basin over the past 14 years and despite 400 new drilling licences being issued across five separate licensing runs, the fact is that more than 200,000 jobs in the oil and gas industry and its wider supply network have been lost. Today 30,000 hard-working people are directly employed in the industry. Those workers and the local economies they uphold need a coherent plan to move past fossil fuel production towards clean energy. The trouble is the Government have not developed one.

A further 100,000 individuals are supported through the supply chain and are waiting for a signal from Government so that they can seize the opportunities of the clean energy revolution. This Bill offers them nothing. It seems to override the already weak non-binding climate compatibility checkpoint. The production emissions reduction target set out in the North sea transition deal is already weak, setting a cut of only 50% by 2030. This Bill seems to weaken it even further. It includes no reference to how annual licensing will be judged against the NSTD targets for production emissions let alone emissions from combustion.

Critically, the Bill ignores the wider environmental consequences of the development of new fields and puts marine habitats at risk. Over one third of the 900 locations in the latest licensing round overlapped with marine protected areas, yet this directly contradicts the commitment the UK made at the convention on biological diversity conference COP15 in Montreal where we promised to protect 30% of UK waters for nature by 2030.

The Rosebank field that was recently licensed sees a pipeline run through the Faroe-Shetland marine protected area, which threatens ocean life. If a major oil spill from Rosebank were to happen, 20 MPAs could be seriously impacted. This Bill is an attack on nature both by its indirect impact through increasing emissions and its direct impact on the marine environment. The Government appear to believe that they know better than the International Energy Agency, the United Nations Secretary-General, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of the world’s leading scientists, all of whom are clear that new oil and gas licences jeopardise further the goal of 1.5°C. This Parliament’s own independent adviser, the Climate Change Committee, confirmed to Parliament only last year that the expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with net zero and that the oil and gas field that is required in the UK as we make that journey to net zero does not require the development of any new fields.

But what I find most depressing about this Bill is not its arrogance or its ignorance, it is the way it seeks to break with the cross-party consensus for the sake of creating a party political dividing line in advance of a general election. That dividing line pretends that the rational, informed scientific view is held only by what the Prime Minister calls climate zealots and it tries to establish the recalcitrant fossil fuel lobby that is endangering all we hold dear across the globe as the reasonable middle ground. It is not. As the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said:

“the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

The fossil fuel lobby is behaving like the tobacco lobby did when all of the medical evidence was against it. First, deny the science outright. When that is no longer credible, pretend that the concern is exaggerated. And when that is no longer credible, reframe the issue as one of personal choice.

Government is about establishing a framework of regulation for the public good; it is not about facilitating the freedom of those who would undermine the public good. That is why this Bill is bad for democracy. That is why this Bill is bad for our global standing as a country that has previously been regarded as a leader on this issue. That leadership is now passing to others who are responding positively to the pledge in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels by joining the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

The floods that we are seeing devastate communities and lives around the country are but a foretaste of the terrifying impacts of climate change beyond 1.5°. This Bill does nothing to mitigate them. It does nothing to support the billions of people across the world who live on the frontlines of climate breakdown. It ignores the plight of millions of bill payers who find themselves priced out of our broken energy system. And it ignores the workers who power our country.

This Bill endangers our natural world and future generations. I cannot support it; I will consign it to the same vote of no-confidence that I predict awaits this Government later on this year.