Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent and pointed debate this evening. Certainly, Opposition Members have together pointed out the deficiencies in the Bill, pointed out what a specious and potentially damaging Bill it is and, indeed, questioned why the Bill was brought to the House in the first place. All that is what I very much want to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) called this Bill “illogical and damaging” and pointed out that it could put marine protected areas at risk. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) pointed out that it makes us look ridiculous on the world stage. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) pointed out that the Bill itself was based on a series of lies and, indeed, quoted the UN Secretary-General stating that “the truly dangerous radicals” are the countries that are increasing their oil and gas output.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) pointed out strongly that this Bill, contrary to its claims, is not about energy security. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who reminded us of the real effects of climate change right now, pointed out that the future is largely electric and this Bill is a “great deception”. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) called it stupid, unnecessary and dangerous—she did not mince her words very much. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) laid many of the myths of the Bill to rest and questioned why the Government are pushing it in the first place. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out the “political theatre” behind the Bill and why it is completely incompatible with our climate change commitments.

This really is a reprehensible Bill. It is a Bill based on a number of myths and, frankly, lies, which require people to believe that there are people around really saying that oil and gas is going to be stopped immediately and will not continue to play a substantial role, as it will in the energy economy up to 2050. No one is saying that oil and gas will not continue up to a period of time and no one is saying that the existing fields in the UK will not continue to produce and contribute their products in the future. There will be jobs in that continuing North sea oil operation.

However, this is a one-clause Bill with effectively two sections in it. The first section ostentatiously requires the Oil and Gas Authority to do what it is already doing; indeed, both the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion reminded us that the Oil and Gas Authority has been carrying out regular licensing rounds every 18 months since 2016. It is required to do so because it is bound by the maximum economic extraction requirement. All that is already in legislation and the Oil and Gas Authority is already doing it.

The second section sets out an entirely bogus climate test, which by definition cannot be failed. That is achieved by skewing the test conditions to test UK gas production emissions only against aggregate liquefied natural gas imports, which are overall likely to be dirtier in production than UK gas, and not against pipeline-delivered gas that, in the case of our main importer Norway, is half as dirty in production as gas in the UK.

There is no emissions test for oil, despite its constituting 70% of North sea fossil reserves—80% of which, as we have heard, is shipped and refined overseas. For oil there is a “net importer” test, which requires the OGA to issue licences if the demand for oil and gas products in the UK is greater than the production—when that has been the case in the North sea for 20 years, with no prospect of reversal. It is a Bill built on completely bogus premises.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about bogus premises, but he just suggested that we could get more pipeline gas from Norway. Does he not recognise that if we do not produce as much gas here, it will not be gas from Norway that we can access but will inevitably be LNG with higher emissions? Will he please, for the benefit of the House, step up and be honest? We do not have the option to get massively more gas from Norway—if we did, we would have done it already.

[Dr Whitehead]

I think I am going to get injury time for that intervention. If the Minister had been listening to what I was saying, he would know that I was stating that the Bill, in a very bogus way, has deliberately sidestepped the fact that there is gas available for import that is much cleaner than ours in its production. We should use that as a test, but the only test carried out was on LNG which, conveniently, is a little bit dirtier than the gas we produce in this country.

The Bill is about not what it says as much as what it does. As the former Energy Minister and author of the Government net zero report, the former right hon. Member for Kingswood, said recently, the Bill goes against everything the UK is saying internationally about moving away from oil and gas, and it has already damaged our international stance by appearing to double down on precisely the thing to which we are saying the opposite on the world stage. The right hon. Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma), the former president of Glasgow COP, said in a courageous and precise speech this evening that the Bill puts into legislation something that already happens under the agency of the OGA. He also stated that its sole purpose is to double down on more oil and that nations around the world will not take that very kindly as far as our commitments are concerned.

The OGA itself emphasised that the Bill was “not necessary”, but

“would significantly challenge one of the tenets of independence for the NSTA, to decide when to run a licensing round.”

Whatever the position in the North sea objectively, the OGA would be forced to scrape up at least a licence a year forever. We know the claim that that would somehow do something for energy security is also bogus. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) recently said that

“new oil and gas licences only provide for energy security if all that energy is sold into the UK and, actually, it will be sold on the world market”—

a point that a number of Members have made this afternoon.

The whole Bill appears to have come about as a result of a wheeze, cooked up by a couple of strategy advisers over a heavy lunch, to put the Opposition on the wrong foot—or, to put it another way, on the right side of history. Quite honestly, that wheeze should have been put down as soon as the effects of the heavy lunch wore off, but instead it has persisted through the corridors of power and has finally made it to the Floor of the House in the shape of this risible Bill, the contents of which evaporate on the first examination by anybody of its serious purpose.

That says rather more about the state of the Government than anything else. Where were the quality controls on policy making? How did something so evidently content-free and fact-averse as this piece of legislation ever make it so far? How did the present departmental Government Ministers, for whom I have a great deal of respect, allow it to happen on their watch, when they must know it is a load of hokum with no policy merit at all? Now they are forced to go out and try to justify it to the House. It is a very sad reflection of what a tiny, bitter and sad space the Government have retreated into, where serious policy development in the energy sphere—God knows we have enough of that to be working on—is replaced by such ill-advised emptiness. That is what this Bill is, in the end: just empty. If passed, it will linger on the statute book for a short period, make no difference to anything in the meantime and be rapidly overtaken by the reality of the forward march to decarbonisation in energy.

However, the Bill will have one lasting effect, as I have mentioned, because it signals strongly and, I am afraid, potentially lastingly that the UK is not serious about its climate and net zero ambitions and is prepared to say duplicitous things on both an international and a national stage. That is bad news for all the genuine work that has so far been done by the UK on net zero climate leadership. This Bill will not stick, but that charge might. For that reason, if for no other of the many reasons that have been put forward in this debate, it is best that we take this Bill no further than Second Reading and refuse as a House to let it pass to further stages.

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

I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma) and for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), and my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous), for Moray (Douglas Ross), for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for their contributions to this interesting debate.

The UK is the global climate leader. It is under this Government that that position has been secured. How is it to be measured? Do we have objective measures? Of course we have. The central challenge is to reduce emissions, and under the Conservatives this country has reduced emissions by more than any major economy on earth. How have we done that? Has it been an accident? No, it has not.

We inherited an absolutely awful situation. We heard from the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) about her time in government, and she talked strongly about the work that Labour did on renewables. Well, it did not add up to much under her and the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). Renewables were less than 7% of our electricity in 2010. Now, that has been transformed. Coal—the dirtiest of fossil fuels—is a further ghastly legacy of the Labour party. We hear so much piety from Labour Members, but what was their performance in government? I will tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker: it was failure. Nearly 40% of our electricity came from coal as recently as 2012. By October this year, it will be zero.

It is the Conservative Government who have stayed laser-focused on delivering climate leadership, and it is in that light that this legislation comes before the House. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), asked why we have introduced the Bill. The Labour party, the Scottish National party and, of course, the Liberal Democrats say that we must have no new licensing in the North sea, even as our production is expected to halve over the next decade, and despite the fact that if we fulfil our world-leading ambitions for 2030 and 2035, which we will, production of oil and gas in the North sea will fall even faster in the country that is decarbonising more than any other major economy on earth. That is the reality; that is the context for the Bill, which brings in annual licensing.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stuart]

The Labour party will support oil and gas jobs—just not in this country. Not having new licences here will make no difference whatsoever to our consumption, but it will make a difference to how much we have to import, and our import dependency will go up. Worse than that for those of us who care about the environment, and to put in their place the pieties that we heard from Opposition parties, it will actually lead to imports with higher emissions than production here, as the right hon. Member for Doncaster North and other Labour Members know, and will worsen our ability to move to net zero in the short term. That is not to mention the 200,000 jobs supported throughout the country, 90,000-plus of which are in the north-east of Scotland and being abandoned by the Scottish National party.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stuart]

The measures will make no difference to our consumption and no difference to world consumption because we are net importers. We are not spilling our product on to global markets. Our oil, for instance, which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) often mentions, is refined at European refineries. It is then turned into product that we can use here. It contributes directly to European and UK energy security.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stuart]

If Members oppose the Bill and allow no new licensing, the impact will be higher emissions, and they will not see the investment that we are seeing in new projects such as Rosebank. What is the carbon footprint of the product from Rosebank? It is expected to be much lower than the average across the North sea and what is expected globally. So, again, not only does closing off licensing mean that we will import more, but it will get in the way of investment into and transformation of our base.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I want to see far less imported LNG. Can the Minister give us some good news on what we might be able to achieve in getting more gas out, and will he ensure that many blocks—not just one—are put up for a licence round to get rid of that LNG?

[Graham Stuart]

The estimate from the North Sea Transition Authority is that a billion of barrels of oil equivalent, including gas, would be lost if we did not have new licences. That is lost tax revenue for this country, on top of the 200,000 jobs and lower emissions—[Interruption.] So far, I have not mentioned the tens of billions of pounds of tax. [Interruption.] It is not surprising, given how comprehensively easy it is to destroy the Labour party’s arguments, that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North keeps up his constant chuntering. He cannot win the argument while he is on his feet, so he sits there and tries interrupting those who can. If we do not have new licensing, which is Labour’s policy, we will see emissions go up in the short term; 200,000 jobs undermined; tens of billions in tax not brought into the public Exchequer; and—for those who care about dealing with the climate emergency—we will lose the very engineering skills and talent that we need to retain in this country in order to make the transition.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stuart]

In the time I have, I will try to respond to a few of the points that have been made by colleagues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney highlighted the commitment of oil and gas companies to net zero. Oil and gas businesses are funding clean energy work. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) picked on one such business, and it turned out that it was investing heavily in our clean energy transition. My hon. Friend the Member for Moray talked about fighting for those 90,000 Scottish workers. I have already mentioned the hon. Member for Llanelli and her rather risible attempt to suggest that Labour had any sort of record on renewables. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central emphasised the importance of oil and gas workers to CCUS, which is absolutely essential.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan said that we are reducing production at twice the rate required internationally. That is true, and it is why new licensing in the North sea is fully aligned with net zero; those emissions are part of that. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) talked about oil and gas being essential to deliver renewables, and supported new licensing. I thank him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland said that what we use is what counts—that is so true. The most important thing is to look at demand: removing and changing vehicles, factories and homes so that they no longer use oil and gas is absolutely central.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford rightly said how important it was that we present this policy correctly. Of course, if only the Labour party was playing a proper and honest part in that, we would be able to champion the tremendous performance of this country in tackling climate change. I really do appreciate the speech that my right hon. Friend made.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) talked about the zero-carbon homes standard, and the importance of improving the insulation and energy efficiency of homes. He is quite right; that is why this Government have gone from the terrible position of just 14% of homes having decent insulation—EPC rating C or above—when we came to power, to above 50% today.

I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) about net zero, but he correctly highlighted that we would just be sacrificing well-paid jobs without making any difference to our emissions, apart from putting them up.

[Mr Sheerman]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been in this House longer than most people, and it is a courtesy to the House in a winding-up speech to give way in an even-handed way. This Minister has given way to a Conservative Member, but he refuses to take any interventions from the Opposition.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of order. It is up to the Minister to decide to whom he gives way. It would be slightly more usual for him to give way to Members who had been in the Chamber throughout the debate. However, it is up to him to decide. And I really do not like points of order in the middle of winding-up speeches.

[Graham Stuart]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Graham Stuart]

You have given your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is to give way to those who have been in the Chamber for the debate, not to Johnny-come-latelies who come in and want to usurp them.

The right hon. Member for East Antrim also highlighted an excellent point about the hypocrisy and humbug that is absolutely central to Labour’s response to this Bill.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Graham Stuart]

If the hon. Gentleman, who has hardly been here, would sit down, I will fortunately be able to come to a close.

The amendment put forward by His Majesty’s Opposition suggests that maximising the falling production from the North sea will put us at the greater mercy of petrostates. That is so obviously untrue that I hope they would hold their heads in shame about it. That has been at the heart of the Opposition’s approach to this Bill.

The Bill is designed to send a signal to the industry that we have its back. It is all about ensuring that we get to net zero in the most efficient and effective manner possible, and it will underpin this Government’s continued leadership on climate now and for many years to come. I urge the House to support the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Well, that was lively. [Laughter.] Now that I have Members’ attention, I want to emphasise how important it is for those who have participated in debates to get back in good time for the winding-ups speeches. When the wind-ups come up early, please just keep an eye out for them and make sure to come back, because people who have participated will be mentioned in the wind-ups and it is courteous to be here to hear them.