Emma Pinchbeck

So firstly, it's a good thing that we've now set a baseline that says the North Sea won't change price because it's sold onto a global market.

And that is a change, I think, from my experience of 2022 and the last energy crisis where the knee-jerk response was we'll do the North Sea and that will help.

Just to be clear, there are two ways you can get it to reduce bills.

One is if you nationalise the industry, which I would argue is quite an expensive thing to do in the middle of a crisis where their profits will be higher.

Or two, and it's also a declining basin, so I'm not sure...

that would be the best possible investment.

But also the other is you could hypothecate all of the revenue and use it.

But then you're saying you're going to do that whilst also saying you're going to send a strong investment signal to private sector companies to invest.

So I practically... Yeah, it's very hard.

It's not going to do much for bills.

So that's a good thing that we're clear on that.

On carbon, again, because it's an international market, the same thing applies, which is, yes, on paper, imported LNG...

has about, I think, three times the emissions footprint of the North Sea.

The Norwegian gas pipe from the other side of the basin is about a quarter of the emissions of North Sea.

And that's because the Norwegians have done a lot more in terms of the carbon intensity of their production over the past 15 years.

70% of our gas is piped from Norway.

It's only about 30% that's on LNG.

And the bigger thing here is, if you were to choose to invest in the North Sea, would that change any of that import-export balance?

Possibly not, because it's sold on to an international market.

Maybe it might impact some of the stuff coming through the pipeline, but then you'd be replacing less carbon-intensive Norwegian gas maybe with more carbon-intensive North Sea gas.