On Monday the Commons debated the second reading of the Offshore Petroleum Licencing bill which is opposed by all the opposition parties, with the exception of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.
The Bill enables the licensing of new North Sea oil fields on an annual basis going forward.
It is opposed because it is perceived to sacrifice UK’s World leadership role in the movement to reduce carbon emissions in the battle against climate change.
I think this fear is quite misplaced. Our leadership is established by the fact that despite generating only about 1% of the world’s carbon emissions, notwithstanding being the 6th largest world economy. we have cut those emissions by more than any other developed economy – they are down by a whopping 30% from the level they were at in 1990.
This achievement has been partly secured by cutting out coal for power generation and increasing
reliance on wind and solar for electricity. In 2010 these two forms of power generation accounted for only 7% of our electricity, now they are producing 40% of it.
UK led has the world to give legislative imperative to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The important thing to remember about this net-zero target however, is that it is ‘net’.
We will continue to generate emissions after 2050 because we will need many more years to replace our need for hydrocarbons in any number of uses from powering vehicles, heating our homes, manufacturing products, and generating electricity until we are able to replace gas-fired power stations, increasing nuclear, and until we have improved our capability to store power generated earlier through better battery technology.
Despite this time lag, we will reach a position of net zero by removing more carbon from the atmosphere through carbon capture and storage, so that overall we will balance continued emissions with the amount that we are removing.
This will be no mean endeavour: it will require new technology; transforming agriculture, and changes to the way we do things.
Nevertheless, it is much more manageable than the hair-shirt mentality that wishes to hobble our economy and prosperity by prematurely closing down one of our greatest assets: oil and gas in the North Sea.
We still need it; and we will still need it for decades after we achieve net-zero in 2050. So, if we do not get it by issuing new licences for North Sea exploration and extraction, then we are going to have to import it from overseas at much greater cost to ourselves and we will forgo what has been a lucrative source of tax revenue to fund public services, currently to the tune of £16 Billion annually.
The Opposition state however, that far from needing the oil and gas ourselves, we are exporting it.
First, they are largely wrong: virtually all the gas goes into our own UK distribution network.
But a significant amount of the crude oil does indeed go to Europe to be refined. This generates export earnings and tax revenues. It also obviates the need of those European refineries to get their crude oil from Russia and the Middle East, removing a source of profound insecurity in our energy mix.
The reality is that the opponents of new licences for the north sea are not against oil extraction in principle, or the 200,000 well paid skilled jobs that enable it, they are just opposed to them being British jobs in British waters. They know we will simply have to get the oil and gas from other countries at higher cost.
The trump card however, and which renders the opponents case to the realm of ‘bonkers’, is that the carbon emissions created by extraction from our North Sea are vey much lower than the emissions generated by having to import it.
Mercifully, sanity prevailed and the Bill was carried by 293 votes to 211