Debate contribution: Ban Petroleum Licensing and Fracking

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 29 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Mike Nesbitt

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

29 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Ban Petroleum Licensing and Fracking

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4486603

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the motion and the amendment. Some time ago, when we first thought about fracking, the Ulster Unionist Party's position was, "No, but". The "but" was a reference to the fact that we were open to persuasion and to saying to those who wanted to frack, "Convince us that it is viable, convince us that it is a good idea, and, above all, convince us that it is safe". In the intervening years, we have moved much closer to a straight, "No," than to, "No, but". "No, but" was a reference to the fact that, frankly, it was about more than just Nimbyism, more than a case of "Not in my back yard". It is valid to question our attitude to whether we want to exploit our natural resources. When lignite was discovered in Northern Ireland, the immediate reaction was a campaign against it. When we discovered "gold in them thar hills" in the Sperrins, the immediate reaction was a campaign not to allow Dalradian to go ahead. Mr Dickson says no to gas caverns in his constituency, yet they have huge potential. We can generate our own hydrogen, but we will need somewhere to store it.

I thought that you might ask.

Thank you very much, Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank Mr Stewart Dickson, who has just made my point for me by saying that he does not want a hydrogen bomb under his feet. There is an element of Nimbyism in our attitudes. We talked about home heating oil. The Chair of the Committee made reference to the fact that we are much more reliant on it, per household, than the rest of the United Kingdom. However, we do not extract that oil in Northern Ireland; we import it. I remind you of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was one of the greatest environmental disasters of modern times. There was an oil spill because of a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, and 4·9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Three years later, dolphins and other marine life continued to die in record numbers, yet, today, more than two thirds of Northern Ireland households still use oil as their main source of heating. "Not in my back yard" is an issue that we will have to deal with.

Yes, happily.

I thank the Member for his intervention. I think that that is the point I have just made by reference to the Gulf of Mexico. If we continue to extract, there is more risk, and we will have to continue to extract if two thirds of our households continue to use a fossil fuel. We have moved from "No, but" to "No", because the limited experience in Great Britain is entirely negative. Only one licensee got as far as drilling — Cuadrilla, in Blackpool — and, in 2019, there were a couple of minor tremors that were attributed to the drilling. There were another two minor tremors in 2011. Since then, the North Sea Transition Authority has told Cuadrilla that it must use a plug-and-abandonment procedure on its two potential wells. That was in August 2023, and it has until the end of this calendar year to comply with that demand. On renewables, of course, we are very much in favour of solar and wind. As we all know, the difficulty with wind is that it is unreliable, which means that we have to work on storage. There is certainly some healthy development in battery storage. The motion talks about tidal energy. Everything that I hear about tidal is that it is not economically viable yet, so we await somebody to make it so. That would be great for us, because we are an island nation and tidal is potentially our greatest green energy source. I remember SeaGen, an experiment in my constituency of Strangford, which produced a lot more energy than it predicted. Happily, the seals that went out for their post-lunch afternoon stroll under water were not cut in half by the blades. There is a lot of potential in tidal to add to wind and solar. For a nation that had no natural mining resources, we could end up in a really healthy position with renewables. I will support the motion and the amendment.

726 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:20 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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