UK fracking and oil drilling good for environment, claims climate minister
Fracking and drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea is green and good for the environment, Liz Truss’s new climate minister said on Wednesday.
Graham Stuart insisted that awarding more than 100 licences to companies for North Sea drilling, covering almost 900 locations, and rolling out fracking across the countryside, were green policies. He told MPs on the environmental audit committee that drilling for new fossil fuels would help the UK reach net zero by 2050.
“It’s good for jobs and good for the economy and it is good for the environment,” said Stuart. He argued that as UK oil and gas production was on a declining trajectory, at a faster pace than required by the International Energy Agency, opening up new fields was green because they would have a lower carbon impact than importing oil and gas which was extracted in a less sustainable way. He called the fossil fuel extraction pioneered by Shell and BP in the North Sea “world-leading”.
“Producing [oil and gas] domestically creates only half the emissions around production and transportation than importing it from around the world,” he said. “In terms of the economy and the environment, domestic production is a good thing and we should all get behind it … it is good for the economy, good for jobs and stops us giving money to dubious regimes.”
The committee corrected Stuart on the issue of gas imports. The UK produces 45% of its gas domestically, and imports 38% not from a dubious regime, but from Norway, which has the highest standards in the world for gas extraction and decades ago banned flaring – where the gas is burned off, producing methane emissions and air pollution. Flaring still takes place in North Sea extraction.
Clive Lewis, a Labour member of the
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