North Sea Gas

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made to reopen storage capacity for North Sea gas that has been closed since 2017.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, Great Britain has 1.5 billion cubic metres of gas storage capacity, which equates to approximately five days of peak January demand. Energy security is an absolute priority for the Government, and therefore we welcome Centrica taking the necessary steps to reopen the Rough storage facility this winter, which is its commercial decision. Last week, the North Sea Transition Authority granted its approval to Centrica to open Rough. Centrica has also received approvals from the Health and Safety Executive and Ofgem.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for what I consider to be quite a positive Answer. However, does he agree that it is not alarmist to point out the bad decision of the then Chief Secretary, a former Shell employee, in 2017 to refuse the public contribution to maintaining the modest amount of gas storage in the Rough field? On the other hand, if it can be reopened this winter, Centrica was not telling the truth in 2017 about the safety and economic aspects of it. They cannot both be right. Is it not the case that we relied on the stock market and just in time, and this has cost the UK dear? We have a very low level of storage, as the Minister said, and Rough would give us an extra 10 days, compared to Italy which has 157 days. We are miles behind, and it is much better to have some security rather than the minimal amount that we have now. My final question is: can we stay part of the EU system for gas networks, if only for the fact that Ireland gets its gas via the UK?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord has made a number of points that deserve an answer. First, it was a commercial decision for Centrica to close the Rough storage facility. Secondly, the reason that the UK has traditionally had lower levels of underground storage than the likes of Italy or Germany is precisely because 45% of our own capacity is from our own domestic resources, which is essentially a huge gas storage facility. We also have 20% of all the LNG unloading facilities in Europe, and in fact the UK has been taking the opportunity during the summer to help the EU, including Germany and other countries, to refill their storage capacities using our LNG import facilities, because they did not have enough of them. So it is a complicated picture, but energy security is a great priority for us, and we are well placed for it.