Petroleum Licensing (Exploration and Production) (Landward Areas) (Amendment) (England and Wales) Regulations 2016

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 General Committees

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, I take the Minister’s words at face value, but as about 80% of my constituency is in an AONB, I would like one or two points of clarification. As I understand it, there could be wells or operations that use more than 1,000 cubic metres of fluid and up to a total of 10,000 cubic metres. Does that apply to individual wells, or to groups of wells? The definition does not seem totally clear on that subject. In other words, there could be one well in an AONB that was under the threshold, but could there be a series of wells that, together, were over the threshold?

This is a complicated subject. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs asked for clarification; I would be grateful if the Minister could give further clarification, because I can see that this will hit my local paper, particular given that I am on this Committee. We need absolutely crystal clear clarification on this matter. None of us is an expert on fracking—it is an emerging technology—but the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, the Opposition spokesman, referred to 46% of operations in the United States being below these levels. Potentially, therefore, there is a concern. The Minister would do himself and all of us a great favour if he clarified these matters.

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[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to colleagues in all parts of the Committee for their interventions and speeches, and I am happy to respond to them. Let me pick up a couple of points of information that were raised. First, I welcome what sounded like an endorsement from the hon. Member for Newport West of our strategy towards a low-carbon future. I would also like to assure my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds that the regulations apply to single wells in each case.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

That is a concern. If the regulations apply to single wells, it would be quite possible to have multiple wells that, together, would breach the 10,000 cubic metre limit. Perhaps I have misunderstood the situation and my hon. Friend could clarify it.

[Jesse Norman]

The intention and the regulations are clear: hydraulic fracturing consent should be obtained for any operations that use more than 1,000 cubic metres at any single stage.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

For any well?

[Jesse Norman]

Any well, so it is a tighter restriction than my hon. Friend perhaps recognises.

On the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, and the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, my right hon. Friend eloquently described the importance of drawing a distinction between conventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing. It is important that we do not get caught up in nomenclature. The Government’s intention is clear: to prohibit what we would describe as hydraulic fracking. There may be conventional, low-scale operations; they are not covered by the regulations. The purpose of the regulations is not to cover those, because there are other protections in the system that configure themselves to local circumstances, including protections in planning permission. It is important not to rule out those things that may have very beneficial local and community effects. The Government’s overall intention is clear. In particular, it is clear that small-scale operations should meet an equivalent range of safeguards to those set out in section 4 of the Petroleum Act 1998.

Let me close by saying that I am grateful to all hon. Members for their comments. Restricting hydraulic fracturing from sites at the surface of protected areas has been welcomed by many interested parties across the political spectrum. It demonstrates our commitment to protecting our most precious landscapes. The regulations will ensure that our excellent record of protecting the environment and maintaining safety for the general public will continue while we take advantage of the promising benefits that a shale gas industry will provide. I therefore commend them to the Committee.

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[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Writing to the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs and to the hon. Member for The Cotswolds after we have voted on this legislation today will have no weight at all and will provide no assurances whatever. Either the legislation protects national parks and areas of outstanding national beauty from fracking and drilling on the surface—not lateral drilling, but wells in pads drilled within the curtilage of the parks—or it does not. If it does not, no amount of writing to hon. Members to assure them that it does will alter that.

A strong case has been made this morning. I make the caveat that we do not know for certain whether every well drilled in the United Kingdom will use more than 10,000 cubic metres of water; we can merely refer to the evidence from the United States, which is that a lot do and a lot do not. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West points out that the UK’s geology is very different from that of the United States. It may be that, just as there are different circumstances—I pointed those out in my evidence to the Committee, as it were—in different states of the US, different amounts of water are used in different geological circumstances. Given the difficult geology in the UK, it may be that quite a lot of water would be used. It may be that Bowland shale and Wealden shale need different amounts of water for fracking.

It will be extremely difficult—the Minister fell on this difficulty—to walk out of this room assured that there will be no fracking in national parks and sites of special scientific interest as a result of the regulations. If that is what we believe, we should not allow the SI to proceed. That is not to say that the Minister is not sincere and clear in his contention that there is no intention to enable fracking to take place in national parks and SSSIs, but evidently there is a dissonance between what the Minister says and what the legislation says.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

On a point of order, Mr Gray. Could you advise the Committee on what the procedure would be for taking the SI away, looking at it carefully, and bringing it back when answers have been given to the queries raised in this Committee?

[The Chair]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The position is that the statutory instrument has been laid before Parliament, made and come into force already. All we are considering today is whether the Committee has considered the statutory instrument. Those who believe that the Committee has considered it properly will vote aye; those who believe that the Committee has not considered it properly will vote no. In either case, there will not be a change to the status of the SI, which is already in force.