My Lords, the UK recently achieved an important milestone in the global fight against climate change. We were the first major economy to set a net-zero target in law, and we are now the first major economy to have halved our emissions since 1990. Of course, we are not resting on our laurels as we pursue our goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 68% by 2030. Between 2010 and 2023, the UK has seen £300 billion of investment into low-carbon sectors, demonstrating that our approach to net zero is working. That is because it is an approach that is proportionate, fair and grounded in reality.
We recognise, of course, that the UK still depends on fossil fuels for meeting around 75% of the energy demand and that that is something that cannot be changed overnight. The independent Climate Change Committee’s data shows that even in 2050, when we reach net zero, oil and gas are expected to continue to play an important, albeit smaller, part in meeting demand and maintaining our national energy security, so managing our remaining reserves effectively will be critical to the transition, and that is why the Government are bringing forward this Bill.
I believe that many of us across the House agree that as a country we must reduce our reliance on oil and gas, but as we do so the question we must answer is: from where do we want to source that oil and gas to meet that residual demand? Oil and gas production in the North Sea has been hugely successful. It has created and supported hundreds of thousands of British jobs and contributed billions in tax revenue over many decades. It continues to provide us with secure, reliable energy and to support jobs and the economy.
North Sea gas currently provides around half the UK demand. OEUK figures show that the sector supports around 200,000 jobs, adds around £16 billion annually to the economy and brings in billions in tax revenue. I think particularly of how important tax revenue like that was in supporting thousands of households with their energy bills following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. This unprecedented support, among the most generous in Europe, was equal to around half the average family’s energy bill or about £1,500. Without tax revenue from industry, that burden would have fallen to taxpayers alone.
Domestic production is also an important part of our national energy security and the energy security of many of our European neighbours. The simple fact is that if we did not have access to this secure and reliable source of energy, we would be even more reliant on imports. The Government’s position is clear: where oil and gas are needed in the decades to come, as much as possible should come from our own waters.
Having said all that, the North Sea is a mature basin and production is in decline. Even with continued exploration and development, production from the basin is expected to decline by around 7% a year, which is, incidentally, faster than the average that is globally required to align with the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway. By 2050, the UK’s North Sea oil and gas production is projected to fall by over 90% from today’s levels. The choice before us is whether we seek to reduce our reliance on imports through continuing to issue UK production licences or stop investment in British oil and gas and import even more from abroad.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the Minister, who set out the Government’s reasoning for the Bill. It is very straightforward in what it does: it would require the North Sea Transition Authority to run an annual oil and gas licensing round, inviting applications for new production licences in our offshore waters.
What is less clear is what the Bill will actually achieve. While families and businesses across the country are feeling the impact of the Government’s energy policy, which has left us the worst hit in western Europe, the Government have brought forward this Bill. It is a Bill that the Government have already admitted will not take a penny off the outrageously high energy bills that people are struggling to pay. It was our high dependency on fossil fuels that put British households in the recent situation that they have been in, so the Bill doubles down.
It is a Bill that will not do anything to address our energy security, as oil and gas are sold, as the Minister knows, on the international market—a case made expertly by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, who, I suggest, knows his stuff. The more we depend on fossil fuels, the more we will depend on those who control, and set the prices on, that market.
It is a Bill that is not necessary to bring down energy imports; the only way to do that for good is to produce more clean power at home that we can control. It will not send the right signal to investors on the UK’s commitment to green industry. It is not good for jobs as the number of North Sea workers decreases, or for the public purse, which has spent far more on subsidies recently than any possible tax revenue. It is certainly not good for the environment; in the words of the Government’s former net zero tsar:
“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield”.
So what exactly is it intended to achieve? All we can see is areas where it takes us in the wrong direction, not least on protecting the environment. We are certainly not alone in this view. The way to enhance energy security, according to the National Infrastructure Commission, is to move away from fossil fuels. In its words:
My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of Peers for the Planet and director of the associated company. Perhaps I will take up from where the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, left off.
With just one substantive clause, this could be called a modest Bill, but I am afraid that, to coin a phrase, it has much to be modest about. Its central provision, providing for an annual round of licensing, was deemed unnecessary by the North Sea Transition Authority. We learn from the Financial Times that the authority was concerned not only that it was an unnecessary “wheeze”, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, but that potentially it undermines the independence of that authority. The two so-called tests to be fulfilled before licences are granted are, as has been pointed out, essentially unfailable—so what about the Government’s justification that the Bill would strengthen the UK’s energy security and reduce reliance on volatile energy markets?
A coruscating commentary from academics at the UK Energy Research Centre described it as a distraction, saying:
“Annual licensing rounds will not ensure the UK’s energy security … Any oil and gas developed as a consequence of new licences is unlikely to come to market quickly and will be sold at international market prices”.
These themes were taken up by the former COP 26 president, Sir Alok Sharma, during debates in the other place, who emphasised that
“the oil and gas extracted from the North sea is owned by private enterprises and the Government do not get to control to whom it is sold”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/24; col. 52.]
Not even the Secretary of State for the Environment still claims that this legislation will help customers with their energy bills because, as Sir Alok pointed out, the products will be sold on the international market. The flaws in our domestic pricing systems mean that the unnecessarily high costs of sustainably produced energy will continue to be high until we solve the problem of the pegging of energy prices. No wonder the Bill was what finally broke the camel’s back for Chris Skidmore, the man who signed the net-zero target into law for the Conservative Government, who was chosen by the Government to undertake the net-zero review and who, as has been said, resigned over it.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, both of whom seem to be against the Bill because the positives are small. One is normally against things because they are negative. The only negative the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, came up with was that it sends out the wrong messages. I have observed a general rule in politics, that when the only argument anyone has against something is that it sends out the wrong messages, they do not really have an argument against it at all.
The question that faces us is whether this Bill is compatible with our commitment to reach net zero by 2050. It is a huge challenge: a huge engineering challenge that, according to the former chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment and professor of engineering at Cambridge, Professor Kelly, is impossible to achieve; let us hope he is wrong. It is a huge economic challenge that, according to a former economist at the World Bank and now professor of energy economics at Edinburgh University, is economically impossible to achieve; let us hope that he too is wrong. Let us assume for the purposes of this debate that these objectives are achievable. What we cannot do is add problems, even small ones, to those mammoth engineering and economics problems by doing things that add to emissions, rather than reduce them; that add to costs, rather than reduce them; and that reduce, albeit by a small amount, our own GDP and tax revenues, which we will need to pay for the transition to net zero.
The sensible path to net zero that we, like other like- minded countries, have adopted is to phase out demand for fossil fuels, not their supply. If energy companies choose to invest in more fossil fuel capacity than is needed, they will lose money; that should not be our primary concern, except for those who happen to have a financial interest in the oil industry. If the UK unilaterally stops producing fossil fuels, which would be a bizarre thing to do if we do not ban their import, others will step in and supply the fossil fuels that we failed to produce but could have. They will also replace any fossil fuels that we provided to the rest of the world. If the whole world were to try to reduce the supply of fossil fuels, as well as phasing out demand, that would have no effect if we did not phase out the supply as rapidly as we reduced the demand. Or, if we phased out the supply more rapidly than we reduced the demand, it would create shortages, massive price rises and huge profits for the oil industry. It would do to ourselves and the world exactly what Putin did to us when he invaded Ukraine and reduced supplies. Is that what the opponents of this Bill want to achieve? Or are they solely interested in the UK stopping the production of oil and gas, rather than the rest of the world stopping it?
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He quoted me; otherwise, I would not interrupt him on Second Reading. I did not quote the Global Witness figures—which I do have—because they are complicated and quite difficult to discern. I quoted the ONS figures, which state that, over the period to which they refer, renewable roles increased by 70%, whereas in hard numbers, there were nearly 48,000 roles in renewable energy, which is considerably more than the 30,000 direct roles remaining in oil and gas. I did not talk about the 200,000 figure; I gave simply the ONS figures showing that there are more jobs in renewables than in oil and gas, and they are growing faster.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that clarification. Somebody used the 200,000 figure—it must have been the noble Lord, Lord Lennie. Anyway, it does not matter.
The Minister did. The noble Baroness has acknowledged that the figure is about 30,000, rather than 27,600; I do not really see the difference, frankly. The point is not which figure is bigger. Why should we sacrifice 30,000 jobs?
The proposal is to sacrifice them if we phase out that industry more rapidly than would otherwise occur. I give way to the noble Baroness if she has some alternative.
I think I quoted the Minister correctly. He talked about the invaluable skills of people in the oil and gas industry, and how those could be transferred into our own industries and not lost to foreign competitors. When I went to a wind farm, the guy who was helping us to go right to the top of the wind turbine told me that he used to work on the oil rigs in the North Sea. He had seen the way the wind was blowing—if that is the correct term—and he took a job in renewable energy, so I am not in the business of sacrificing anybody’s jobs.
I mentioned the possibility that people were claiming they could move across, and some of them will, but it will mean disruption. We should not unnecessarily require people to give up a job and —hopefully—take on another one. As the noble Baroness said, these jobs already exist and will go on increasing in number if we increase investment in renewables. I have not argued against that at all. The two types of job are perfectly compatible. Both can exist side by side, instead of there being only one lot of jobs.
The other argument is that 80% of our oil is sent overseas to be refined, and so production of our own crude oil does not result in any security. I used to be an oil analyst in the City, examining how these things work. If, in a crisis, a country has supplies of crude, it can trade it for other types of crude that work in its own refineries. This is how the market works. It does give you security because you can say, “We will send you that and, in return, we want products or the equivalent amount of crude that we can refine ourselves”. It gives greater security—not a huge amount because we do not have a huge amount of oil and gas, but a bit of security is better than none.
The arguments used by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, and in most of the briefing notes that I have seen, are all about how small the advantages from the Bill will be. The Climate Change Committee—the Government’s official independent adviser—has come out against this Bill and the Government’s decision to continue licensing new fields in the North Sea. I put the arguments I have made so far to its outgoing chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is a colleague and my old friend, when he appeared before the Environment and Climate Change Committee. I asked him whether he wanted the whole world to phase out oil and gas, or just the UK. He said, in effect, “Just the UK”. He said:
“The world is producing oil sufficient to meet our needs … There are many countries in the world that will still be producing oil and have no intention of reducing that. There are other countries that could produce oil and gas and have to make a choice between going down that route and going down the route of renewables. We have a duty to try to get them to make the right decision because otherwise we will destroy our world and ourselves … We have to get other countries to do the right thing … If you say to a country that does not have oil, ‘You have a chance to produce oil and your future will be with oil’, I am afraid it will not go for renewables, even though this is the real answer … We have to set an example”.
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Without investment in new UK oil and gas fields, we would lose out on more than 1 billion barrels of oil and gas, worth billions in revenue. More than this, our production would decline faster than we could build low-carbon replacements and before the workers in the sector could smoothly transition to jobs in renewable industries. We estimate that such a decline would increase UK import dependence from around 60% now to 70% by 2035. That is more liquefied natural gas with higher production emissions and none of the economic or energy security benefits.
If there was no investment, tens of thousands of skilled British jobs would be placed in jeopardy. Industry leaders have already warned that North Sea workers are at risk of becoming
“the coal miners of our generation”
if we fail to manage the declining North Sea basin in a sustainable way. We cannot allow this to happen.
A recent report from Robert Gordon University found that over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have medium to high skills transferability to the offshore renewables sector. A key commitment of the North Sea transition deal is to ensure that people and skills from the existing oil and gas workforce are transferrable across the wider energy sector. Make no mistake: these skills are in demand the world over. If they are not wanted here to deliver our own production and our own energy transition, they will surely go overseas and deliver someone else’s.
The general secretary of the GMB—not somebody I quote very often—recently wrote:
“In an increasingly volatile world the UK needs plans and not bans for the future of our energy sector and the transition to net zero”.
In this particular case, the Government could not agree more. We need oil and gas and our domestic oil and gas sector. Industry knows it, the unions know it, everybody knows it—except, perhaps, the noble Lord opposite—and I urge those opposed to continued licensing to think again.
We all want a successful energy transition. This means accepting that oil and gas will continue to play a role in meeting our energy demands for decades to come, and supporting investment and jobs in the North Sea through new licensing so that we can continue to produce that oil and gas from our own resources. However, it also means that during this transition, while we are decarbonising all other sectors of the economy, we should also produce these fuels in the cleanest way possible.
Since 2019, the carbon intensity of global oil and gas production has fallen by around 3%. From the North Sea, it has fallen by 14%. We will go further. The North Sea transition deal commits the offshore oil and gas sector to reducing emissions from operations to 50% of 2018 levels by 2030, with emissions already falling by 23% by 2022. To support this, we have committed to zero routine flaring and venting for both oil and gas by 2030, going further than the World Bank’s zero routine flaring initiative. Industry has made significant progress in meeting this target, with already a near 50% reduction in flaring since 2018. The NSTA already expects all new developments to have zero routine flaring and venting.
This Bill is part of the effective management of the energy transition. This new legislation will require the North Sea Transition Authority to run an annual process for new exploration and production licences in the UK continental shelf, subject to several key tests being met: first, that the UK is projected to remain a net importer of both oil and gas, and, secondly, that carbon emissions associated with UK gas are lower than imported liquefied natural gas. The tests ensure that annual licensing can take place only where it remains the right thing to do.
A more predictable licensing regime will not take us back to the era of peak production in the North Sea; as I said, the reality is that this is a fast-declining basin. Instead, new licensing will simply seek to manage that decline rather than to increase oil and gas production above current levels. However, it will give industry the certainty and confidence it needs to support the continued investment necessary both for our energy security and to help deliver the energy transition. That is an investment worth billions of pounds from companies such as Shell—which is also planning major investment in low-carbon and zero-carbon infrastructure, including offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage—and BP, which plans to invest up to £18 billion in the UK’s energy system by the end of 2030, in addition to its operating spend in the United Kingdom. The Bill demonstrates the Government’s ongoing commitment to the industry and helps to provide the certainty to ensure that the UK continental shelf remains an attractive investment as we transition to renewables.
The UK is a world leader on climate. We are one of the most decarbonised economies in the world and have met every one of our legally binding carbon budgets, but the fact remains that we will still need oil and gas in 2050, and it is simply common sense to use what we have. If we produce oil and gas here, it is the British public and our European allies—not foreign, and potentially hostile, regimes—that will benefit. If we produce here, we can be safe in the knowledge that our stringent regulations have kept the environment safe. If we produce here, we can reduce our reliance on imports, such as LNG, that have up to four times the production emissions of domestic production. If we produce here, we support a vibrant industrial sector, British jobs and communities that will be key to delivering the energy transition, rather than see them disappear overseas to help to deliver someone else’s. I believe that the choice is clear.
I will leave the House with the words of the chief executive of the NSTA, who said that
“we won’t get to net zero without oil and gas”
and that
“producing as much of the oil and gas we need as possible domestically is the right thing to do, for security and the economy”.
The North Sea has powered us through the last half century and, if we manage the transition correctly, it will power us through the next. I beg to move.
“Reliance on fossil fuels means exposure to geopolitical shocks that impact the price of these internationally traded commodities”.
This Bill does the opposite.
As for investment, the CEO of Aviva made it very clear that new oil and gas drilling
“puts at clear risk the jobs, growth and the additional investment the UK requires to become more climate ready”.
Then there are the thoughts of the former net zero tsar who quit Parliament over this Bill, the right honourable Chris Skidmore, and the widely respected former COP president, the right honourable Alok Sharma. Chris Skidmore called the Bill
“another historic mistake and a grave error”
that is
“totally against the sentiment and direction of the global stocktake”.
Furthermore, he reported from Dubai that the UK’s international leadership will be undermined until a moratorium on new licences is resumed. Alok Sharma said that it would
“reinforce the … perception of the UK’s rowing back from climate action … and that does make our international partners question the seriousness with which we take our international commitments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/24; col. 52.]
With how little of substance the Bill will achieve, the only obvious answer is that the Government see it as a symbol. As we have made clear, the symbol that is being sent is very much the wrong one.
We will try to improve the Bill during the remaining stages, but let me be clear. First, what is needed is not an improvement to the Bill but a whole different approach. We need the UK to be made a clean energy superpower with cheap and secure energy so that families and businesses are protected from spiralling bills, and jobs and investment are boosted across the country. That is the Labour Party’s mission: to cut bills, create jobs, deliver energy security and provide climate leadership. This Bill does pretty much the opposite. But given that the Government are determined to press on with a Bill that will achieve nothing, it would be irresponsible not to seek to improve it. So we will look to see what we can do.
The Bill contains two tests that should be passed before the North Sea Transition Authority can proceed to issue a licence—but these tests, as drafted, cannot be failed. Liquefied natural gas will always be more greenhouse gas intensive in production than UK natural gas. There is no situation in which the North Sea field will meet our total demand for gas and oil. Tests that cannot be failed are simply pointless. We seek to replace these tests with ones that produce a proper judgment about whether a licence should be issued. These tests will be based first and foremost on whether issuing a licence would be in line with our climate change goals. I also look forward to the House considering other areas in Committee—methane, leak detection, protection of green areas—and seeing where we can find cross-party agreement to maybe even give this purposeless Bill some purpose.
The Bill does, however, have one merit. It has given rise to one of the most remarkable speeches made in the other place, by Dr Alan Whitehead MP. I will finish by quoting part of his speech:
“The whole Bill appears to have come about as a result of a wheeze, cooked up by a couple of strategy advisers over a heavy lunch, to put the Opposition on the wrong foot … Quite honestly, that wheeze should have been put down as soon as the effects of the heavy lunch wore off, but instead it has … finally made it to the Floor of the House in the shape of this risible Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/24; col. 105.]
Exactly so.
We all recognise that we are in transition and—as the Minister often reminds us and did again today—we will need supplies, albeit reducing supplies, of oil and gas for some time. However, we need to move that transition along with more investment in cheaper, cleaner, homegrown power and in the alternative sources that are necessary to cater for the issues of intermittency.
Rather than offering encouragement to oil and gas companies, which, despite their claims, do very little in the renewable sector—it receives only a tiny percentage of their UK investment—we should focus attention and incentives on investing in onshore and offshore wind, tidal power, nuclear power, battery storage and the back to basics energy efficiency with which the Minister knows many in this House are deeply concerned. Moreover, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis is concerned that the Bill could make our existing challenge of decarbonising, to which the Minister referred, harder. The institute says:
“Stimulating both offshore wind and oil and gas sectors will spur competition over limited supply chain resources. This will increase costs which will disproportionately affect the offshore wind sector”.
The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that annual licensing will
“provide greater certainty to the industry and potential investors”,
but we need that certainty and encouragement for the industries and technologies of the future, not of the past. We need to look at the interests of workers in the energy sector in terms of their future and how we can transfer their invaluable skills—not abroad, as the Minister said, but into the sustainable, clean energies in this country where the opportunities are and where the growth is higher than it is in oil and gas.
New licensing rounds are unlikely to restore offshore oil and gas jobs that have been lost steadily over the years as the basin declines, as the Minister said. Despite increasingly favourable tax regimes having been implemented since 2015 and high levels of investment, North Sea oil is a declining basin and roles in oil and gas in Scotland decreased by 36%. Over the same period, renewable roles increased by 70%. In hard numbers, recent ONS figures stated that there were nearly 48,000 roles in renewable energy—considerably more than the roughly 30,000 direct roles remaining in oil and gas. This is the growth economy of the future and we should invest in its workers. We should recognise that the net-zero economy is outstripping the rest of the economy, with 9% year-on-year growth, as recently reported by the ECIU.
In many ways, the Bill is a paradox. It achieves very little in energy security and in fulfilling the Government’s stated aims. It does not do what it claims or what is necessary. But because it does not do very much that does not mean that it is harmless. It has a very clear impact in the negative messages that it conveys about the Government’s real commitment to the action that we need to transition successfully to the economy powered by clean energy that we need. Sadly, it reinforces the messaging that has been dripping out from the Government in the last 18 months and the perception of “slowing UK climate ambition”, as the CCC puts it. That perception—indeed, that reality—is deeply damaging to the international reputation on climate change that the UK has built, certainly since the passing of the Climate Change Act and arguably since Margaret Thatcher recognised the centrality of the issue of climate change in her speech 35 years ago. We cannot continue to lead, as the Government say that they have been proud to, if we continually water down our national commitments and priorities.
It is a modest Bill but, sadly, a damaging one, which looks backwards to the technologies and industries of the past rather than to the sustainable growth of the future. However, this House concentrates on improving legislation so, however wrong-headed in principle we consider this to be, I look forward with others to our discussions in Committee and on Report and to exploring amendments on the marine environment, on supporting workers transitioning to new roles in clean energy and on ending the unnecessary practice of venting and flaring, which continues to add such potent pollution to our atmosphere.
I do not hold out much hope that the Minister will move much on the objections in principle to the Bill, but I hope that he will at least be willing to look seriously at changes that could contribute to the thriving low-carbon and nature-positive economy which the Government recognise that the UK needs.
Even if our fossil fuels did not involve fewer emissions in extraction and transport, or, in the case of gas, additional emissions over and above that in liquefaction and regasification, there would still be a very sensible case for us to keep producing such oil and gas as is available in the North Sea. Remember, the UK plans to reduce emissions not just by reducing demand for and use of fossil fuels, but by employing carbon capture and storage. That is a sensible thing to do because, according to the Climate Change Committee, our estimates and those of others suggest that without resort to carbon capture and storage, the cost of meeting the 2050 targets would be twice as high. We will use carbon capture and storage, which means we will continue to use oil and gas up to and after 2050—unless, of course, people on the other side want to double the cost of meeting the net-zero commitment.
I got the impression from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, that the Labour Party’s approach to this is based on the assumption that there is a choice between continuing to produce new oil and gas fields in the North Sea and developing renewables in the North Sea and elsewhere. There is no such alternative. We can do both, we are doing both and we should continue to do so. He also argued, as did the noble Baroness, that all the benefits of producing oil and gas in the North Sea are small ones: there will be only a small benefit in emissions reductions; there will be only a small benefit to the economy; there will be only a small benefit in extra tax revenues; and there will be only a small benefit in saving jobs and energy security. Well, small benefits are better than none, and we should pocket them if we can. The noble Baroness quoted Global Witness evidence that the claim that the oil and gas industry employs 200,000 jobs is wrong. She said— and I have no reason to doubt her or Global Witness—that the real figure is 27,600. Global Witness says that this does not matter, but it still seems a lot of jobs. It is pretty heartless to say to those 27,600 people, who are largely in Scotland, that their jobs do not matter and they can probably find a job in the renewables industry, if they are lucky, because they have transferable skills, notwithstanding the disruption and the need to move.
The other argument—
I find that argument absolutely pathetic and incredible. The idea that phasing out production in the North Sea more rapidly than need be is going to persuade some African country which finds oil not to produce its oil but to go down the route of producing renewables is just ludicrous. It could, of course, do both. We should recognise that this is the only argument that the Government’s own independent advisers have against the Bill.
We should recognise that, in law, the Climate Change Committee has no role in advising about the supply of oil and gas. Its role is about phasing out emissions, so it is acting ultra vires even in coming out with its recommendations against this Bill. That is as maybe.
Other arguments suggest that it would be bad for the environment—that dolphins and other wildlife would be disturbed by offshore oilfields. Of course, they would be equally disturbed by offshore wind farms. This does not seem a wholly credible argument.
Most people argue as if allowing petroleum licences and producing renewables are alternatives. The Bill will not stop renewables at all. In so far as it boosts the economy and tax revenues, it will help fund the transition. There is no time limit on speeches. In my view, by the same logic that applies to the Bill, we should also allow the production of oil and gas on shore. We should license onshore exploration and drilling for shale gas, subject to a local referendum in the area where it occurs, and to allowing the companies that wish to drill to offer incentives to those in that area. I have been told that they are prepared to pay £1,000 per head and subsequently to offer cheap gas if they find it.
Why do we not do this? I know enough about the oil industry to know that everything is uncertain, but there is a lot down there. I do not know whether or not we can get it out of the shale. If we can, all the arguments that there is only a small amount disappear because the potential quantities are very large.
I hope that we will not be carried away by those who object to producing oil and gas. It is a luxury belief. They can oppose production because it has no direct effect on them, but it will marginally impoverish the rest of us. This is not something to which we should give in.