Shale Gas Production

Lord Oates Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her remarks. I suspect that she is probably right that there was an unholy alliance between Putin and some of the more extreme end of our environmental movement. Of course, both had the same objective in mind: to rule out shale gas production. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that there were some serious problems caused by the attempted fracking in Lancashire. I take the point which my noble friend is making. We are not ruling it out. If the scientific objectives can be overcome, and the tremors which were caused can be solved, it is potentially an option for the future.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

Is the Minister aware of the remarks made this afternoon upstairs by the former Kenyan Prime Minister and current presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, about the impact of climate change on his country, including increased droughts and flooding and deteriorating food security? Does the Minister share my concern that those advocating fracking do not seem to recognise that it would provide no solution to the current energy crisis, would lock us into dependency on fossil fuels and takes no account of the climate emergency? In this situation, is it not the number one priority to reduce the amount of energy which we are wasting?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I have not seen the remarks to which the noble Lord is referring. Of course, we still have our commitments to net zero, which is now a legally binding commitment, but the reality of this situation, which we have debated many times before, is that there is a need for fossil fuels during the transition—unless we are proposing to disconnect everyone’s gas boiler and stop them driving their cars tomorrow, which I do not think is anyone’s sensible position. We need fossil fuels during the transition. It is unarguable that it makes much more sense to try to get those fossil fuels from our own production, rather than relying on Putin or other unstable parts of the world. Having said that, we also need to progress our nuclear generation capacity and invest in renewables, which we are doing. We are talking about quadrupling our renewables capacity from offshore wind alone, from something like 4 gigawatts up to 10 gigawatts. We need to be doing all those things; we need a diversity of supply.