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Offshore Petroleum Activities (Oil Pollution Prevention and Control) Regulations 2005.  

Once again, I thank the Minister for explaining so clearly the effect of the regulations and the reasons behind them. We support all reasonable efforts to preserve our environment, and we acknowledge the positive effects of the regulations. Our concerns focus, first, on the fact that the increased regulation and associated costs to the industry, assessed variously at between £100 million and £130   million, mean that the point at which it becomes uneconomic to continue to extract oil from the North Sea may come sooner than it otherwise would. Secondly, the rules that this country imposes on itself might be more rigorous than those applying to other countries, risking our competitiveness and jobs in a cut-throat marketplace. The Minister mentioned Norway but other countries are involved in oil production. Thirdly, the reduction in the oil discharge brought about by the regulations is very small in the context of the overall pollution of our waters, bearing in mind that the Minister in the other place acknowledged that a bigger problem was input from rivers and events such as tanker casualties. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on those points. Despite those concerns about the continuing burden of regulation, on the basis that the regulations seek to preserve our environment we shall not oppose them.