Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

In my four years as a Member of Parliament, I keep coming back to this question: whose interests does this place serve? Do the laws we pass and the structures we maintain serve the interests of our constituents? Are they designed to enrich and empower them? Or do they deepen inequalities in wealth and power, serving the interests of the super-rich and the companies that dominate our economy? I say that because with this Bill, the question feels more relevant than ever.

The Bill, which scales-up fossil fuel extraction in the North sea just as we should be rapidly scaling it down, is obviously not about helping our constituents. It is not about bringing down energy bills—even the Secretary of State admitted that—and it is not about energy security. A former BP boss said that new North sea drilling is:

“not going to make any difference”

to energy security. That is no surprise, since fossil fuel companies are given ownership of what they extract and then sell it on the world market. The Bill is the very opposite of tackling the climate crisis. That is a blatant truth recognised by the Government’s own Climate Change Committee, which said the Bill is not in line with net zero.

If the Bill is not about energy bills, energy security or tackling the climate crisis, what is it about? The answer is simple. It is about maximising profit for fossil fuel giants, guaranteeing that they can extract every last bit of oil and gas, no matter the consequence for people and planet. These companies are the last that need our support. As energy bills soared last year—our constituents know that reality far too well—BP’s global profits hit £23 billion. Shell reported its highest ever profits: a whopping £32 billion. This year, the world’s five biggest oil companies are expected to hand investors more than £80 billion. Record bills for my Coventry South constituents have meant record profits for fossil fuel giants.

Eye-watering North sea oil and gas profits are not an accident, but by design. They are aided and abetted by Government choices. The Government’s North sea tax and subsidy regime is so skewed in the interests of fossil fuel companies that for years Shell and BP got away with paying zero tax on North sea production. It is so rigged in these companies’ interests that the company developing the Rosebank oil field will get a £3 billion tax break to develop the site, meaning our constituents will pay 91% of the cost of developing it. The public pays the costs, the company creams off the profits and then we all face the consequence of its climate-wrecking activity. And there is no doubt about that, because the science is clear: developing new oil and gas fields is incompatible with our climate commitments.

More oil and gas extraction may be good for fossil fuel companies and their shareholders, but it spells disaster for the rest of us. If we continue to let the climate crisis deteriorate, we condemn our constituents to a world where extreme weather patterns become more common and more severe; where there are more Storm Henks and more Storm Ishas, and where their winds blow harder and their floods get deeper. We condemn young people across the country to a world where droughts destroy crops and food systems break down, where sea levels rise and millions are displaced.

That is the world that this climate-wrecking Bill is helping to create, but there is an alternative. It is called the green new deal. It is a programme of state-led investment in green industries, rapidly replacing fossil fuels with renewables, creating millions of good unionised green jobs, taxing the richest, and redistributing wealth and power in favour of ordinary people. Unlike the Bill, it is a plan that puts people and planet before profit. There is no time to waste. I urge colleagues to vote against this climate-wrecking Bill and build that brighter alternative.