Harriet Cross

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) for securing the debate. I start by paying my respects to Sir Jim Milne, whose death at 85 was announced today. Sir Jim was a giant of the oil and gas sector. Born and raised in Aberdeen, he went on to be one of the north-east’s most renowned energy sector entrepreneurs. My condolences, and I am sure those of many others, go to Sir Jim’s family, friends and many colleagues, who will miss him greatly. This debate is not about whether we need oil and gas. We do, and we will for decades. It is about where the oil and gas we need comes from, and whether we get the economic benefits from producing it ourselves. While we need oil and gas, and while we have oil and gas, we should be prioritising using our own oil and gas. But—madly—we are not. When the Government permitted Jackdaw a few weeks ago, they said it would be good for jobs, good for business and good for energy security—and they were right. But those same arguments apply for Rosebank. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Douglas Lumsden) and others have highlighted, Rosebank will support thousands of jobs, directly and in the supply chain. It could deliver tens of billions of gross added value to our economy and around half a billion pounds annually in direct tax revenues. No serious Government would be prepared to walk away from that. Rosebank is primarily an oilfield, but it contains a notable amount of gas. Although Jackdaw is expected to produce the equivalent of 6% of the UK’s gas needs, Rosebank could contribute a further 4%, and the Government permitted Jackdaw on the basis that it was good for gas supplies this winter and good for energy security. The same reasons therefore apply to Rosebank. One of the principal arguments made against Rosebank in this debate is that the oil will be exported, so let us deal with that face on. About 90% of the crude oil that we extract in UK waters is refined in the UK or exported to Europe, with approximately 65% of that, as we have heard, returning to the UK as refined products—products that we need every day. The extraction of oil from the UK is good for our energy security. It is far better than importing oil from the other side of the world, where supply is vulnerable to disruption at choke points such as the strait of Hormuz. Let us be completely honest: the export argument is incredibly superficial. We are an exporting nation; we are the fourth largest exporter in the world, and trade accounts for 60% of our GDP, so why has that suddenly become an argument against Rosebank? Those who are concerned about the oil being exported should ask themselves why the UK has lost a third of our refining capacity in the last two years and whether they will support our proposals to scrap carbon taxes and restore the competitiveness of domestic refineries—but, sadly, I doubt that many will. The reality is that the alternative to not producing our own oil and gas here is not using less; rather, it is importing more. Those imports are more carbon intensive, extracted under different standards and shipped miles around the world to get here. So why are we deliberately replacing domestic production with more high-emission imports? That is the choice that those opposing Rosebank in this debate are making.