Mrs Kemi Badenoch >
(North West Essex) (Con)
I asked the Prime Minister six questions last week and he did not answer a single one. He has a duty to this House to answer the question. Let us see if he can do better this week. I will start with a simple one. Will the Prime Minister approve the licences for the Rosebank and Jackdaw gasfields in the North sea?
Mrs Badenoch >
The Prime Minister loves to hide behind legal process. I wonder what a Director of Public Prosecutions would make of the defence, "Sorry, I can't produce my WhatsApps-my phone has been stolen." The Jackdaw gasfield could be up and running before winter. All that gas would be used here in the UK to heat 1.6 million homes. That is enough to power Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex put together. Will the Prime Minister approve the licences, or is the Energy Secretary running the Government?
Mrs Badenoch >
The Norwegian Prime Minister is doing what is right for his country—if only our Prime Minister would do the same. Stopping all new drilling in the North sea was a reckless promise when he made it before the election; in the middle of a global energy crisis, it is catastrophic. Experts are predicting a £300 rise in bills in July. Approving new licences would show that he is serious about cutting bills. Why will he not do it?
North Sea production does not impact UK energy bills.
The central energy issue in the UK today is around affordability, with millions of households still struggling to heat their homes and businesses impacted by high costs nearly five years
More domestic oil and gas production makes no difference to UK energy bills. North Sea output is too small to influence global prices, and reserves are owned by oil and gas companies who sell them to the highest bidder at international market prices. In 2023, during the energy crisis, then Conservative Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho, admitted that new drilling would not bring bills down.
The UK is particularly exposed to volatile fossil fuel markets, with the cost of gas setting the price of electricity the majority of the time. Russia's war with Ukraine, which saw much larger spikes in energy prices than today, led to UK consumers paying an estimated additional £183 billion in excess energy costs, severely damaging people's finances and the UK economy.
The UK has burned through most of its gas.
After 50 years of drilling, the North Sea is a hyper-mature basin with just a small fraction of UK gas reserves remaining. Most of what is produced is oil, 80% of which the UK exports.
According to official projections, based on expected development activity - even if new North Sea fields are developed - the UK's reliance on imported gas is set to rise from 55% today to more than two-thirds dependent by 2030, and over 90% dependent on gas imports by 2050, due to the declining basin."
Opening new oil and gas fields makes almost no difference to UK dependency on gas imports.
Jackdaw, one of the biggest undeveloped gas fields, if approved, would reduce our annual gas import dependency by just 2% on average; and the controversial Rosebank field, whose reserves are primarily oil destined for export, has the potential to reduce annual gas import dependency by just 1% on average:
Two consecutive weeks, #SemiBadenough has used #PMQs to challenge Starmer over extraction of oil/gas from Rosebank & Jackdaw fields in N. Sea. It's too bad she didn't consult her colleague Coutinho, who as Energy Secretary in 2023, said that drilling in these fields wouldn't reduce energy bills. 🤦♂️🙄