Carbon Budgets: Methane Flaring

Lord Fox Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. The finest minds in the Civil Service have been devoted to deciding the acronym for the new department. “Deznez” seems to be the favourite, though I should say that my Secretary of State rightly points out that no one has any idea what all these acronyms stand for so we should use its full title, which is the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

In answer to my noble friend’s Question, the Minister said that there are reasons why this is technically difficult. It would help noble Lords if the Minister could explain what those technical difficulties are. I can understand it when new wells are being tested, but this is established production over the long term. What exactly are the technical difficulties?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am happy to arrange a briefing with officials for the noble Lord if he would like, but the technical difficulties are, first, technological, in that it requires a lot of new infrastructure and pipework to be installed, and some of the facilities that flare are oil platforms that do not have facilities to pipe the gas to shore. Secondly, there are huge economic costs associated with it; obviously, some of the infrastructure goes back to the 1970s.