Rosebank and Jackdaw Oilfields
Debate between Michael Shanks and Julia Lopez(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Michael Shanks
It is important to separate the question of licences in these two cases from the consent process—licensing and consenting have always been different processes. We have said that we will absolutely respect licences that have been issued. We have no plans to and will not revoke existing licences, but neither will we issue new licences to explore new fields. As my hon. Friend rightly says, there have been licences for those fields for a very long time, and we will not revoke them. The question now is about specific consent applications for those projects. That will come before the Department when we have put in place the process to respond to the Supreme Court judgment, and when the companies, if interested, re-submit their applications.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
The Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields could supply 8% of the UK’s gas needs. The Minister has talked about the court cases, but will he clarify why the Prime Minister let the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero take Government lawyers off the defence of this case? If their push for growth is to mean anything, will the Government look again at changing judicial review processes?
Michael Shanks
On 20 June last year, the Supreme Court ruled that regulators must consider the impact of burning extracted oil and gas in the environmental impact assessment for new projects. Of course, we were already in an election cycle by that point. I do not know what the previous Government would have done, but a Supreme Court judgment gave a very clear steer that regulators must consider that impact, so I find it very hard to believe that they would have continued to defend a case that the Supreme Court clearly stated could not continue. This Government took the view that it would be wrong to put more public money into the case, when the two applicants themselves accepted the judgment of the Supreme Court. If the Opposition are saying that they would have continued to pour public money into such a case, I would be very surprised—or perhaps disappointed, but not surprised.