Bath MP: Government’s protection of oil and gas over renewables is totally backwards

31 March 2023

At Business Questions on 30th March, Wera Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP for Bath, asked the Government to update the House on the progress of the Rosebank oil and gas field application and how it could be considered compatible with the UK’s climate targets.

In response to Mrs Hobhouse’s question, the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, referred the Bath MP to the Government's new Net Zero strategy set out on the same day. The new strategy sets forward Britain’s energy future after the Government lost a court case which said its original plans had insufficient detail so they had to re-announced them with further information. The plans themselves did not mention major new investment in green initiatives. The Government also did not commit to blocking Rosebank in the Statement on the new strategy later in the day.

The Times have reported that Rosebank oil and gas field has cleared a major regulatory hurdle in the past few days. Burning the field’s reserves would produce over 200 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to running 56 coal-fired power plants for a year. It is also more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world.

If approved, Rosebank will be developed by Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian Government. The UK public, however, would carry almost all (91%) of the costs of developing Rosebank. It is estimated that the UK Government would make a net loss of more than £100 million over the life of the field.

Rosebank’s owners would receive over £500 million in taxpayer subsidies to develop the field, through the Investment Allowance loophole in the Energy Profits Levy (windfall tax). The new investment allowance is estimated to cost the UK public almost £11 billion - enough to give an inflation-matching pay rise to every NHS worker and teacher for a year.

Ninety percent of Rosebank’s reserves are oil, not gas. Like 80% of all North Sea oil, the majority of Rosebank’s oil will be exported. Equinor has said itself that Rosebank’s oil: "will be sold on the open market, and the most likely destination for that oil is the continent of Europe."

To compound this, Rosebank will not lower fuel bills. As the Government has confirmed, “additional UK production won’t materially affect the wholesale market price.”

Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat Climate and Energy Spokesperson and MP for Bath, commented:

“The extraordinary amount of money which the Government has put into fossil fuels whilst not investing properly in renewables shows the Conservatives’ priorities to be clearly in the wrong place. It is so telling of how this Government feels about climate change: they simply do not care.

“How the Government can sit there and spout that they are world leaders in the fight against the climate crisis is beyond me. They have protected fossil fuel interests at every turn whilst not pushing forward renewables. That shows no sign of stopping now.”

Wera Hobhouse MP’s exchange with the Leader of the House can be found here.