Oil Refining Sector

Debate between Luke Taylor and Lee Anderson

Thursday 11th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) for securing this important debate, and all the Members who have spoken for their contributions. I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the future of aviation, travel and aerospace—we have done a lot of work on sustainable aviation fuel—and that I met representatives of Exolum, the International Air Transport Association, LanzaJet and the Tank Storage Association in preparation for this debate.

At times of great upheaval and change, it is tempting to look to political leaders, artists or other major cultural figures to get a sense of where the world is headed. That is certainly a popular approach among historians, but I think it misses something: the often pivotal role of engineers—and I say that not just because I am one myself, or was. It is not necessary to subscribe to an entirely materialistic view of history to recognise that engineers, no matter who they work for or where they work, are often at the vanguard of the kind of technological change that enables our wider political or social ambitions to be achieved. That was true at the cusp of the industrial revolution; it was true when the white heat of technology exploded the middle class in the ’50s; and it is true now, perhaps more than ever, as we embark on the mission to undo the damage to our environment that previous technological shifts have wrought. We must secure our energy supply so that we can withstand an ever more uncertain future, and transform our late-industrial malaise into a green, prosperous and abundant economy through a truly just transition.

Data from the oil and gas industry shows that it directly supports around 26,000 jobs across the UK and indirectly supports 95,000 more. These are largely jobs in offshore drilling, rigging, catering, scaffolding, onshore fabrication yards, anchor manufacturing and vessel maintenance, and there are more. It is also estimated that there are another 84,000 jobs among the hospitality workers, taxi drivers and others who serve industrial communities and are supported by them in turn. We have seen before what happens when there is a major industrial shift and we fail to support jobs and the communities they help to keep alive—from the closure of the pits to the ongoing crisis of British Steel. We must learn lessons from past deindustrialisations to avoid similar damage to communities today.

All policy makers should dedicate themselves to avoiding the traumatic manifestations of necessary—or, at the very least, foreseeable—moments. It is vital that any job losses in this sector are mitigated by reskilling and retraining with new green investment. However, right now in 2025, we are losing our traditional refining, chemicals and existing biofuel production capability and home-grown expertise. Complexity, departmental misalignment and a lack of pragmatism in public policy are holding back the existing and future fuels sector. The Government have the power to solve those things. I hope that today we can suggest and agree some constructive next steps.

Earlier this year, Liberal Democrat colleagues and I recognised the importance of the Government’s Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill. Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, will be one of the main enablers of aviation’s transition from polluting liquid fossil fuels to a future of hydrogen, battery and hybrid zero emission power plants. As part of that transition, SAF has a huge role to play in creating new green jobs and delivering on our energy security goals.

Local production creates jobs, improves resilience, reduces import dependence and stabilises prices, but without efficient resource allocation and strategic investment, future refinery closures could create severe supply bottlenecks and undermine our energy independence. It is equal parts encouraging that there is consensus among the serious political parties in this country about the need for transition and energy security, and concerning that from different ends of the spectrum, the Greens and Reform are either wilfully ignorant or unwilling to accept that supporting the oil refining industry to transition is critical.

The Greens seem willing to turn their back on any of the major technologies involved in the just transition of our fossil fuel infrastructure. They are locked into the pursuit of an ideological purity that sees those companies and producers solely as the problem and not as part of the solution. Reform’s static, stagnant and staggering belief that net zero is either bound to hurt working people or just bad in and of itself, only gives them the self-satisfied and smug smile of someone who thinks they know all the answers, but that could not be further from the truth.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Member talks about hurting working people. Does he not agree that the closure of the oil refineries hurts working people?

[Luke Taylor]

I completely agree. That is why we are talking about a transition. It may well bring shivers to the hon. Member’s spine to talk about transitions, but it is critical that we talk about them in a reasonable and sensible way, and about how we look forward to the future rather than to the past. Reform’s approach is equally dogmatic and damaging as that of the Green party and has already been found wanting in practice in local government.

We can only make the transition a reality if we grasp the opportunity to utilise our existing oil refining infrastructure to turn to the chemistry of the future, with a diverse set of feedstocks from a wide range of supply points. We should be working with industry on delivering that, but industry leaders tell me that on the critical steps that the Government should be taking, they are going ignored or unheard.

Let us take bioethanol, for example. At the start of 2025, the UK bioethanol sector provided 895 million litres of renewable fuel production capacity and thousands of direct and indirect jobs. It was also a significant market for British agriculture and providing critical co-products such as carbon dioxide for the NHS, and for the food and drink sector. As of December 2025, the industry has been halved, following the US-UK trade deal.

An immediate solution would be to transition that bioethanol to SAF, as the alcohol-to-jet technology being developed in the UK can convert it into jet fuel. Under the SAF mandate rules, however, bioethanol readily produced in the UK—sustainable enough for a car engine—has been deemed not sustainable enough for a jet engine. Will the Minister consider the request of industry to support the UK’s bioethanol industry to continue operations and simultaneously support SAF production by allowing bioethanol use under the SAF mandate? The upcoming call for evidence on the role of crops under the UK SAF mandate should be released urgently, and a pragmatic approach taken.

Similarly, opening hydrogen storage subsidies to include liquid fuel infrastructure would ensure that existing assets could play a role in the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen storage is critical, but hydrogen production and usage are also critical to our future renewable goals and to providing the supply of SAF that will be required to decarbonise aviation. DFT rules state that, to make compliant SAF in the UK, hydrogen must be green hydrogen—rightly—and cannot be supported by the hydrogen production business model, a scheme established by DESNZ to get UK hydrogen production off the ground. That alone is not controversial. However, there is no green hydrogen available in the UK that will not be supported by the HPBM, which means that a portion of SAF using these renewable molecules will be uncompliant and, essentially, very expensive fossil jet fuel, despite it actually being green. I convey to the Minister the ask from industry that the DFT and DESNZ should be urgently working together to ensure interconnectivity with hydrogen policy and SAF policy, so that SAF producers are not penalised for using domestic industry?

Sentencing Bill

Debate between Luke Taylor and Lee Anderson

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

On a point of order, Ms Ghani. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) just swore at my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin).

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

indicated dissent.