To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which new oil and gas fields will be issued with production licences in 2022.

This is a disgraceful non answer. I asked about production licences so they respond about exploration licences. The quango they refer to reports to them and is meant to implement their policy. Ministers have made clear they do wish to see rapid progress on replacing imported LNG with more domestic gas, but clearly the Departmental draftersĀ  are not entering into the spirit of this.Ā 

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (75742):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which new oil and gas fields will be issued with production licences in 2022. (75742)

Tabled on: 01 November 2022

Answer:
Graham Stuart:

Licensing is a matter for the North Sea Transition Authority which publishes all figures and statistics regarding licence awards for oil and gas exploration and development on its website.

While the 33rd UK Offshore Licensing Round officially opened in October, awards for licences under this round will not be made until next year.

The answer was submitted on 09 Nov 2022 at 17:02.

22 Comments

  1. Mark B
    November 12, 2022

    Good morning.

    Whilst it may fall to the North Sea Transition Authority to issue licenses, and said licenses are yet to be made known as the closing date for them to be submitted is12th January 2023 (see their website), I would have thought they could have issued what licenses have so far been granted since the last round.

    If our kind host allows

    https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/licensing-consents/licensing-rounds/offshore-petroleum-licensing-rounds/

    1. Nottingham Lad Himself
      November 13, 2022

      Disgraceful? It’s your party and you urged everyone to vote for it, Sir John.

  2. Sharon
    November 12, 2022

    Unfortunately, anyone related to government seems to have perfected the art of non-answers.

    I had some great non-answers with regards to accessing my pension details, access to which seems to change annually. I still canā€™t access it, but one sensible person who read my letter of complaint, did send me a print out of it. But Iā€¦ still canā€™t access it myself!

  3. beresford
    November 12, 2022

    I see that the ‘Conservative’ government are becoming ‘they’ rather than ‘us’. Will a tipping point arrive at which you ‘cross the floor’ to join a new party of actual conservatives?

    1. glen cullen
      November 12, 2022

      I dream the dream

  4. James1
    November 12, 2022

    Mr Stuart is either stupid, or thinks you are. Either way he should be sacked for giving non-answers to perfectly reasonable questions.

  5. Iain Moore
    November 12, 2022

    Transition Authority?….transition is the in word, what a joke , but is shows they are all imbued with this cultish Marxist Net Zero

    1. Mickey Taking
      November 12, 2022

      transition means ‘we don’t like what we’ve got’ but ‘we intend to move to what we want, whatever it takes’.

      1. glen cullen
        November 12, 2022

        Exactly that

  6. Bloke
    November 12, 2022

    Does Graham Stuart still work at a call centre?
    ‘Have you seen our website?’ is often their best answer.

  7. Donna
    November 12, 2022

    A great example of WHY our political class has created all these unaccountable Quangos.

    It’s so the Minister of the day can provide garbage answers to questions; deflect blame and deny responsibility.

    For those who have never worked in the Civil Service (I have) this non-answer will have cascaded down through about 8 pairs of hands to the poor sap who actually wrote it; and will then have gone back up through the same route until the Minister signed it.

    And it doesn’t answer the question.

    1. Mickey Taking
      November 12, 2022

      you won’t get far if you answered any question.

  8. Lewis Bowker
    November 12, 2022

    I remember that in PM David Cameron’s manifesto he promised the electorate that he would have a “Bonfire of Quangos. How did this one miss the executioner?

    1. Mickey Taking
      November 12, 2022

      intentionally forgot the matches.

  9. agricola
    November 12, 2022

    You get the none answers you do because there is no laid down policy on anything. Boris & Carrie havs departed the stinking remains of their big Nett Zero idea behind along with all the unresolved aftermath of leaving the EU in an amateur niaive fashion, exacerbated by a bunch of politicians unhappy about the democratic selection of a leader, who have now userped power. Power that they do not know how to exercise, or for what purpose. They are completely lacking in any form of ongoing vision for the United Kingdom. Even those two words are an exageration. In five days, if that vision is not forthcoming, you are toast. The opposition are equally “Up S..t Creek without a paddle”.

  10. turboterrier
    November 12, 2022

    Further proof that the civil service swamp and all its quangos need removing.
    Where oh where are the ministers and politicians that can stop all this nonsense? They are sure as hell not in Westminster in great numbers.
    When is all this pissing down our necks and telling us it’s raining culture going to end?

    1. Wanderer
      November 12, 2022

      TT. The politicians who could stop all this nonsense are either dead, or exiled to the backbenches and treated with what amounts to contempt.

  11. Bill Mayes
    November 12, 2022

    It’s difficult to understand why the current batch of Government Ministers roll out the same scripts as their processors. The common denominator is the unelected – those in the back offices. It is obvious these are are the organ grinders here and the elected minister a mere assistant.
    After his TV appearance 40 years ago, Sir Humphrey still runs Whitehall. Why?

  12. XY
    November 12, 2022

    All of your questions elicit non-answers to one degree or another.

    As long as it doesn’t affect the outcome of elections, the ministers concerned won’t care.

    But my feeling is that the Conservative Party is in for a shock in the next few years. They won’t only lose the next election by a landslide (quite a non-achievement from an 80-seat majority), they will be be finished as an electoral force.

    No-one will believe them ever again. They make manifesto promises, arrange coronations to trash the economy and renege on referendum results, refuse to allow the right of their party to do their thing.

    Twice now we’ve voted for one person, who seemed ok, and a manifesto that was largely acceptable – and got someone else nd broken manifesto commitments. The BoE collusion to trash Truss was the last straw, showing that there will never be a conservative government through that party.

    I’ll be voting Reform UK, nothing that Sunak and his crowd of engineered 2-year recession widgets can do will change that now. Even though a week is a long time in politics, such cliches won’t help them because their downfall is already decided by their history.

  13. Mark
    November 12, 2022

    Of course technically they can’t be certain that any new field will pass through the hoops of certification for production. So the question has to be couched in terms of asking for a list of platforms where drilling of new structures is taking place, together with estimates of when they might commence production according to their operators. After all, we can examine the list of CFD projects at the Low Carbon Contracts Company website which shows the anticipated capacity and start date of all the supposed forthcoming projects, although I note that LCCC have so far failed to provide a proper current indexed CFD value for projects in the recent allocation round, which are still quoted in 2012 base price terms only.

    Reply They grant production licences!

    1. Mark
      November 12, 2022

      Of course they do – once the facilities have been certified as meeting the requisite standards they are permitted to go into production.

  14. alastair harris
    November 13, 2022

    This approach of attempting to delegate responsibility and deflect criticism seems to be all to common in a government that is not fit for purpose!

Comments are closed.