{"id":449372,"date":"2025-09-25T02:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T02:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/449372\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T02:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T02:33:10","slug":"uk-energy-chief-eyes-an-oil-and-gas-loophole-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/449372\/","title":{"rendered":"UK energy chief eyes an oil and gas loophole \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That involves a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nstauthority.co.uk\/media\/y3wkdnuq\/ukcs-development-and-production-consent-guidance.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">parallel process<\/a>, where the NSTA assesses a project&#8217;s development plan while OPRED judges its environmental statement.<\/p>\n<p>The NSTA can&#8217;t sign off the development plan or grant drilling consent, though, until OPRED has completed its assessment. During the OPRED process, the environmental statement has to be signed off by DESNZ, effectively giving Miliband a mechanism to overrule the regulator\u2019s recommendations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That would give Miliband \u201cin theory &#8230; lots of discretion to override regulator decision-making,\u201d said Martin Copeland, chief financial officer at Serica Energy, one of the country&#8217;s largest oil and gas companies. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Paul de Leeuw, an energy expert at Aberdeen\u2019s Robert Gordon University, called the guidance \u201cpragmatic\u201d and \u201ctimely,\u201d adding it provides \u201cthe secretary of state with the powers to make a balanced and informed decision, reflecting a wide range of considerations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A second senior oil and gas industry figure \u2014 who has held talks with all major parties including the government and was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive lobbying \u2014 said they sensed \u201ca split in government along the lines of environment and economic growth.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are fresh political pressures on Miliband just as these new powers take effect, the same person said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there has been winds of change blowing through Westminster in recent months. I think that\u2019s due to a number of reasons. Obviously, the \u2018Trump effect\u2019 [backing aggressive fossil fuel drilling in the U.S.] is having a significant impact and it&#8217;s galvanizing the right. It&#8217;s galvanizing Reform and it&#8217;s galvanizing the Tories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That involves a parallel process, where the NSTA assesses a project&#8217;s development plan while OPRED judges its environmental&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[151176,151177,748,2437,30,10594,12495,32,17790,5398,35,3975,25833,393,728,1214,7159,4884,151178,1195,475,806,807,11582,2441,3739,384,517,1144,2661,5111,5434,856,2343,48,332,5549,712,811,16,15,49,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-449372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-alex-sobel","10":"tag-barry-gardiner","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-companies","13":"tag-courts","14":"tag-decarbonization","15":"tag-development","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-ed-miliband","18":"tag-emissions","19":"tag-energy","20":"tag-energy-security","21":"tag-energy-supply","22":"tag-england","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-exports","25":"tag-fossil-fuels","26":"tag-great-britain","27":"tag-greg-jackson","28":"tag-growth","29":"tag-imports","30":"tag-industry","31":"tag-keir-starmer","32":"tag-lobbying","33":"tag-markets","34":"tag-net-zero","35":"tag-nigel-farage","36":"tag-north-sea","37":"tag-northern-ireland","38":"tag-oil","39":"tag-parliament","40":"tag-petroleum","41":"tag-pollution","42":"tag-research","43":"tag-rights","44":"tag-russia","45":"tag-safety","46":"tag-scotland","47":"tag-security","48":"tag-uk","49":"tag-united-kingdom","50":"tag-united-states","51":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}