new drilling would not reduce energy bills for British consumers, and the group’s chair, former Conservative environment secretary Lord Deben, expressed his favour for a moratorium on North Sea exploration. Refusal of a new licence would “send a clear signal” to consumers as well as investors that the UK is committed to its climate goals, he said.
However, having concluded that it is unable to clearly establish whether new exploration would significantly increase carbon emissions globally, the committee noted that any decision on new licences must be taken by ministers. “Weighing these advantages is an inherently political decision, which goes beyond climate policy and sits rightly with government, not with my committee,” Deben wrote in a letter to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
He went on to say that any expansion in oil and gas exploration in the North Sea would do little to nothing to held British consumers struggling with rising energy prices. “Any increases in UK extraction of oil and gas would have, at most, a marginal effect on the prices faced by UK consumers in future,” the committee chair wrote.
Meanwhile, environmental campaigners claim that restoration of North Sea’s declining production would have disastrous impacts on the ongoing climate crisis. “The committee’s opposition to continued North Sea exploration is a clear acknowledgment that there is a limit to what we can safely burn,” Tessa Khan, director of Uplift, campaigning for an end to fossil fuel extraction, said. “There’s no justification for these developments, which will see the oil in them exported. They won’t lower bills or contribute to UK energy security. All they’ll do is increase industry profits.”
