UK Parliament / Open data

Energy Bill [Lords]

Proceeding contribution from David Mowat (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Monday, 18 January 2016. It occurred during Debate on bills on Energy Bill [Lords].

My hon. Friend is right. That development was probably already discounted in the market. Nevertheless, more oil will, of course, put the price down. Like the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell), I worked in the oil industry for a period of my life. During that time a phrase that was often used was that the solution to low oil prices is low oil prices. At some point there will be a market reaction, but it is a long way off. My hon. Friend is right—the Iranian thing does not look helpful.

I have two points on this part of the Bill. The first is one that the SNP may agree with. The new authority is to be based, apparently, in Aberdeen and London. I do not understand why any of it has to be in London. I leave it at that. We have a need in this country to have everything in London. If anything needs to be only in Aberdeen, it is the new authority.

The second point is whether the new authority is going to have issues with US competition law. I do not fully understand that, but my experience is that there could not even be a meeting between US oil companies in the same room without lawyers involved, because of their incredible concern about US anti-trust laws. I wonder how the authority will deal with that, but no doubt somebody cleverer than I am has thought about that.

We have spoken about CCS. Clause 80 is an interesting amendment proposed by the Opposition in the House of Lords. That clause says, broadly, that should we no longer take credits from the EU emissions trading scheme as part of the process. If we step back and think about that, it is the Opposition saying that they do not want a European solution to cap and trade. I made this point earlier and I think I am right. It is true that the European ETS system is useless; that is a different problem. It is completely useless because the European Parliament would not increase the cost of carbon as we have, for example, but that is no reason to give up on a European solution. It seems odd that the two more pro-European parties in this House—I think it is fair to say that—want to go away from a European solution to sort out emissions.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

604 c1220 

Session

2015-16

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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