This Bill was introduced by Baroness Sheehan on 15 January 2020 and is yet to have its second reading scheduled. The main purpose of the Bill is to prohibit onshore hydraulic fracking. In addition, the Bill would amend the principle objective for the Oil and Gas Authority from “maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum” to “Sustainable principal objective and strategy”, defining the latter as a 100% reduction in carbon from the 1990 base figure. This would have the effect of existing licences to extract oil and gas not being renewed unless companies produced a strategy of how they would phase out oil and gas and support areas that are economically reliant on it.
If successful, this Bill would have vast consequences across the oil and gas sector and place a requirement on them to change how they operate by placing value on the future rather than profit.
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