Speeches by Shanks.

“I can to a certain extent, but I want to be careful to say that we are at quite an early stage in some of those discussions. The likelihood, on the basis of current proposals, is that there will end up being quite a mix of projects rather than one significant project. I think it adds some strength to the future of the …”

“I am not sure, to be honest. I suspect it may be a factor, but on behalf of the public, who fund the National Wealth Fund, it is probably looking more at investability of the proposition, but it will take a wide look at that. It is important to say that the National Wealth Fund is not a high street bank; it is there to…”

“I am not responsible for sustainable aviation fuel, so I do not have all the detail here. The Department for Transport takes a lead on some of this. I think we will weigh up the options for Grangemouth in terms of the speed that something could be delivered and the viability of the project in the current regulatory fra…”

“Again, I am sorry, I cannot go into the detail because it is not in my brief. I think the HEFA cap is a question for DEFRA. I know it is something that we are looking at across Government and, of course, the SAF Bill will be looking at some of these questions as well. It is not something in my brief, I am afraid.”

“We are working together on a range of things, but individual Departments have a lead responsibility for policy on specific things. SAF is not in my Department. I do not want to speak on behalf of a different Department, so I think following up with DEFRA or the Department for Transport might be more useful. Clearly, wh…”

“They are working together, but again, if we were to change the SAF mandate in the UK, we could not change it just for Grangemouth, so there are wider considerations, and there are other refineries that may want to work on SAF production as well. I would just caution against the idea that enacting all the Project Willow…”

“I think I answered your question by saying I have not done an assessment of that, which is true because I am not the Minister responsible for aviation fuel. What I would say, in a general sense, is that our approach across Government is that we are going to co-operate with China where we can, and we are going to challe…”

“I do not have an exact time, but it will follow. The sector plan was part of the industrial strategy. A series of actions will come from that. The workforce plan is an incredibly important part of it. It is partly what the Office for Clean Energy Jobs will be doing. The purpose of that is to bring together both the opp…”

“I cannot go into consultation responses that we have not fully analysed yet, but I will say categorically that the Government are committed to their manifesto commitment of not issuing new licences to explore new fields. What we want to do—and this is why there were detailed questions in the consultation—and how we ena…”

“I want to be quite careful not to summarise any of the consultation response we will issue, but I want to be clear that when we say no new licences to explore new fields, that will be our position. The exploration of new fields will not happen, but there are, of course, complexities in how licences are currently operat…”

“Existing licences will remain in place. That is important to state. We are not going to rescind any existing licences. Of course, a lot of licences are returning to the NSTA, but we are not rescinding any licences. Fields that already have a licence can go through the consenting process, which we announced a few weeks …”

“Two things are worth saying. First, we have always licensed fields in the North Sea. It is an important part of how we have managed it to date, but as I have said in a number of my other answers, the North Sea is a declining basin. When you talk about an externality, I think the most fundamental one is that the geology…”

“Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be back in front of the Scottish Affairs Committee. I was a member in the last Parliament, so thank you for having me back. We need to look at the question of the transition in the wider context of what has been happening in the North Sea over the past few years and indeed decades; i…”

“First, we have been in government for less than a year. More than 70,000 jobs have gone from oil and gas in the past 10 years. This is not something that suddenly started in July last year. What we have seen is a failure over the last 10 years to grasp the opportunities of that transition. If I take offshore wind as a …”

“I do not think it is. There is a natural decline happening in oil and gas, and that is just a reality, whatever way we want to look at it. We will need oil and gas for many years to come, and it is an important part of our energy mix, and it will be, but so too is our mission to move towards clean power by 2030. The tr…”

“I do not think it makes a material difference, in the sense that we do not own what is extracted from the North Sea. It is owned by private companies that trade on an international commodity market, at an international price that is not set by Britain, for anything that they extract from the North Sea. Although the rec…”

“There are two different points in your question. First, we have been importing from Norway for many years. This is not something new. The fields are different. It is important to say that the continental shelf produces different things. If we look at the licensing position, for example, less than 10% of the licences th…”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“I might ask Michael to come in on some of that. Your second point around material benefits is important. That is partly why it is so important that we now move forward as quickly as possible on building up investment in the jobs that come next so we do not lose that investment. The reason this is so important to this C…”

“I am not at this stage, I am afraid. What we deliberately did with the consultation was broaden it out from a series of specific questions to a much broader conversation, and some genuinely open questions to stimulate conversation, about what the future of energy in the North Sea will look like. Core to that are some q…”