Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Oil and Gas Authority’s proposed supplemental guidance on the disclosure of certain Geophysical Survey Data (created or acquired under an Exploration Licence pre-2018) published in March 2019, what assessment his Department has made of the compatibility with the rule of law of the retrospective application of that guidance.

The treatment of legacy geophysical survey data is a matter for the independent oil and gas regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority, which ran a consultation exercise on the issue to which it will respond later this year.