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Energy Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 8, page 5, line 8, at end insert ““, or ( ) has a decommissioning programme for the facility, which has been approved by the Secretary of State.”” The noble Baroness said: Perhaps I may digress a little before speaking to the amendment. We have had a change of Clerk and I think it would be a nice moment for us to applaud the way in which she trains for her work. On Tuesday she led the parliamentary women's tug-of-war team to great triumph and I think that we should congratulate her. Amendment No. 3 deals with the decommissioning programme. This clause relates to the licensing of gas importation and storage projects and, more aptly, it relates to the offences of carrying out unlicensed activities. Yet it is concerned only with the duration of the projects and makes no provision for decommissioning them. This may be a dangerous oversight. The intention behind this amendment is to level the playing field in the energy sector to ensure genuine competition wherever possible. Other parts of the energy sector, such as wind power, are required to have full decommissioning programmes established from the outset. We want to ensure that this is spread across the entire sector. Sometimes rigs are abandoned in very rough seas or stop being used for whatever reason. Before a facility could stop being used for the importation or storage of combustible gas, it would be required to have a detailed proposal in place for decommissioning the site, which would have to be signed off by the Secretary of State. This could specify things such as what is required to be removed from the site to prevent danger to shipping and the environment. It could also specify the establishment of a decommissioning fund similar to that proposed for the nuclear decommissioning programmes. That would make certain that decommissioning occurred regardless of the circumstances of the owners or users. We understand that in Schedule 1 amendments are made to the Petroleum Act 1998 such that the decommissioning process will be extended to offshore oil and gas. I understand that we want to avoid conflicting penalty schemes and undue complication about what happens if the decommissioning programme is inadequate, but a few questions still need to be answered. Could the Minister explain the relationship between the extension of penalties and regulation under the Petroleum Act and the new licence arrangement that the Bill introduces? How will the licence programme in the Bill be integrated into the provisions in the Petroleum Act? The Petroleum Act allows the Secretary of State to require decommissioning security at any stage in the life of these facilities, but who decides this? Is there a statutory obligation on offshore gas importation and storage facilities to have a comprehensive decommissioning programme from their inception? I beg to move.