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Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Inspections etc.) Regulations 2012

My Lords, thank you very much indeed for your excellent questions, and I am delighted that we have the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, who has more knowledge about this subject in his little finger than I do in my entire body. As always, the noble Lord asked a very salient question, which of course we can answer. I would like him to understand—perhaps he will nod at me if he does—that we are talking about offshore storage because onshore storage is not contemplated at the moment. The Energy Act 2008 allows for either Scottish Ministers or the Secretary of State to license a site that is partly in the area of the authority and partly in the other. In that regard, there is a memorandum of understanding that will govern the co-operation, so I hope that that satisfies the noble Lord—and deals with one of the questions asked by the noble Baroness, which I will come on to in a second. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, invited us to consider who these inspectors are. Of course, they are the same people because they have significant expertise in the oil industry, where I believe we are a leading light in health and safety and have a very strong knowledge of inspectorates. I remind noble Lords that we are going slightly into the unknown here. A lot of good work has been carried out by friends of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, in this area. It is not a proven technology but we have got as close as we can and we are lucky to be able to borrow on the great expertise we have in the North Sea. We did not go into consultation because this is quite a simple subject. We do not really need to consult on it. I am afraid that our department consults far too much and this is something that we should reduce a bit. I hope he will be satisfied that, for a change, we are not consulting—it seems to go on forever and take up a lot of our officials’ time so this is one that we will miss. Stress testing of the whole thing is the sort of factor we will look for in the inspection regime report. That goes from capture down through the pipelines, to ensure that there is no leakage, that the gas is being transmitted effectively all the way through the process and that it is working because there can be solidification. Then, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out, there may be leakage from offshore storage. We must vigilantly check that all the evidence supports the storage facility being able to contain it and that there is no seepage which inevitably leads to pollution. We are informed that that will not happen but we want to make absolutely sure. They will have to be vigilant in this, particularly, as I said, because it is a demonstration project at this point. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose asked whether the Scottish Executive are up to speed. We have been working closely with the Scottish Executive. As my noble friend knows, the winner of the first competition was in Scotland. The Scottish Executive have been working closely with us on this throughout and harmoniously—you might say for a change. Our department has a very good relationship with Scotland. That brings me to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. What more can I say than what I said the other day? The Government are committed to the CCS demonstration project. The Treasury has committed £1 billion. As the noble Baroness knows, I was responsible for negotiating if not achieving the outcome of the first demonstration project. It is important that we get the thing moving quickly. On Thursday last week, I went through the timelines by which we expect to achieve this. We set ourselves an exacting target of being able to appoint or acknowledge the winner of the new process in June or July of next year. That is a very exacting timescale. We had an industry day in December and are having another one this month to set out the framework within industry. We have a lot of interest—from small and large-scale companies. I will not go into that now because it is unfair on those that are competing. The competition starts by March and they have until the middle of June and July to put in their bids. Our current timeframe is that we will announce that winner by the end of September.