Clause 14
Energy Bill
2:45 pm
Brian Iddon (Bolton South East, Labour)
I am a little concerned about subsection (4):
“A direction may be given only if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the amount of petroleum which exists in its natural condition in the relevant stratum is so small that it ought to be disregarded for the purposes of that Part.”
My question is: how will the Secretary of State know? Will the evidence come from the company that has previously been extracting petroleum oil from the reservoir, or will independent soundings be taken—that will obviously be more difficult?
When the Science and Technology Committee carried out an investigation into carbon caption storage and published a report in February 2006, we discovered that enhanced oil recovery is the only way of clearing out considerable oil reserves that are in the interstitial cavities of the rocks. That is the only way to ensure that the oil is completely evaporated, or that it is as evacuated as possible of petroleum oil. If enhanced oil recovery has not been carried out, there will be substantial petroleum oil reservoirs down in those cavities.
During the evidence-taking session I had a conversation with Mike Tholen, the Director of Economics at Oil & Gas UK—that is at columns 105-6 of the transcripts for 19 February 2008. He gave the impression that enhanced oil recovery is very common these days, and that most of the reservoirs that would be used for the storage of gas, and later carbon dioxide, would be empty of petroleum oil. However, the evidence that we took in this report suggests otherwise. It is important that whoever polices subsection (4), is aware of those facts.