Seaward Petroleum Licensing

HC Deb 09 June 1998 vol 313 cc502-3W

Mr. Blizzard

To ask the President of the Board of Trade when the 18th round of seaward petroleum licensing will take place. [45364]

Mr. Battle

The 18th Seaward Petroleum Licensing Round has opened with the publication of the formal offer notice in the Official Journal of the European Communities.

The notice invites applications for unlicensed acreage in the northern, central, and southern North Sea and in the northern half of the Irish Sea, Liverpool Bay, and Morecambe Bay. These are established oil and gas provinces where licences were last offered in 1994.

Interest is expected, in particular, from companies keen to use new data acquisition and processing techniques to locate structures similar to recent finds in other sectors of the North Sea or elsewhere in the world, or to identify new resources close to producing fields which may extend the life of their existing offshore infrastructure.

The offer includes blocks relinquished by previous licencees in response to the fallow blocks initiative, which has encouraged companies to hand back acreage for which they have no current exploration or development plans, and so to make it available for others to explore and exploit where possible.

A number of unlicensed blocks in the broad areas covered by the round have been excluded from this round, either for environmental protection reasons on the advice of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, or to protect the interests of other sea users.

Drilling and development activity under licences awarded in this round will be subject to the requirements of regulations to implement the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (85/337/EEC) as it applies to the offshore oil and gas industry which came into effect on 30 April 1998. The regulations apply to all relevant projects, irrespective of the date of the licence under which they are carried out, and will give the public access to project Environmental Statements on which they can comment to the Government.

The closing dates for the receipt of applications will be 10 and 11 September. I hope the industry will take full advantage of the licensing opportunities available to them.