Mr. O'NeillTo ask the President of the Board of Trade which aspects of development proposals for smaller oil and gas fields will be subject to less rigorous assessment by his Department's officials.
§ Mr. EggarWe plan, as recommended in the scrutiny that I published on 22 October 1992, to identify a threshold below which the Department would normally expect to give less rigorous scrutiny to questions of reservoir potential in considering field development applications. Applications would, however, have to satisfy the full range of requirements and obligations placed on oil and gas producers.
Mr. O'NeillTo ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the categories of information which will no longer be required from oil companies by his Department 695W as a result of the change in regulations on oil and gas field development announced by the Minister for Energy on 22 October 1992.
§ Mr. EggarMy Department is implementing the recommendations of the scrutiny that I published on 22 October and we plan to issue comprehensive new guidelines in June 1993. As far as information is concerned, we are reducing monitoring of production from fields already on stream and it is our intention to reduce information accompanying field development applications to the minimum needed to assess acceptability and compliance with relevant obligations. We have already made clear our preparedness, as recommended in the scrutiny, to receive information in the latter category in the companies' own format.