L

Lord Whitehead (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 9 March 2026

Debate

Energy Markets

Contribution

My noble friend is right that the North Sea is not just a mature field but a very mature one. Indeed, as we are seeing, one of the opportunities for the North Sea is not so much getting oil out of the ground but putting carbon back into it, in terms of exhausted fields that are presently near their demise or thereabouts. There is no magic wand that we can wave to suddenly produce lots of new oil and gas in the North Sea; we are talking about small pools, small fields and so on, if at all. The emphasis clearly has to be on making sure that production continues, not on ensuring that exploration—chasing a bit of a will-o’-the-wisp in terms of the field—is under way. My noble friend is also right that the previous Government did indeed fail to produce a single nuclear power station during the entire time of their regime, whereas now we are on the cusp of making sure that small nuclear modular reactors are a thing of the future and that we have the sort of nuclear economy that is fit for a low-carbon economy—generally dispatchable, smaller, nimble and part of the energy economy.

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