Offshore Oil and Gas: Venting and Flaring

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question. There are regular assessments of all this. As I said, the NSTA publishes data on its website highlighting flaring, venting and methane performance of different assets. We are well aware of the issues and are keeping on top of them. If there are any issues around this, especially on venting, fines of over half a million pounds can be set against the company involved.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, which last year produced a report on methane. Methane is responsible for a full third of the global warming we see today, but it behaves very differently from carbon dioxide because it is much shorter lived. Therefore, if we can reduce methane emissions rapidly, we can start to cool the planet within a decade or two. Given that the Secretary of State for DESNZ has accepted that credible UK leadership on methane needs a methane action plan, when will we see it?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The answer to that question is that we are expecting it very, very soon. Not very soon—very, very soon. We will see it in the coming days.

On our record on methane, I will repeat what I said to the noble Baroness earlier. The North Sea Transition Authority estimates that absolute methane emissions from oil and gas production have fallen by more than 60%, and flaring reduced by 51% between 2018 and 2024. We are making great progress on this. Is there more to do? Yes, but we are on top of it.