Department of Energy and Climate Change
The Energy Bill is part of our long-term plan to back business, create jobs to provide lasting economic security for working people, and secure the recovery for the benefit of families across the UK.
The Bill also supports our work to power the economy with clean, secure, affordable energy supplies while keeping bills as low as possible for hardworking people and businesses.
The oil and gas industry is one of our great industrial success stories over the past 50 years, supporting around 375,000 jobs, contributing 3bn to our economy last year and is critical to our energy security.
As a Government we are committed to backing it. We took forward the rapid implementation of the Wood Review and the Oil and Gas Fiscal Review, establishing the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) and taking action to help revitalise exploration.
With this Energy Bill, we are going further. We are strengthening the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) with new regulatory powers so that it can drive greater collaboration and productivity in the industry, helping it to grow, attract investment, create jobs and remain competitive for the future.
These new powers will enable the OGA to maximise the economic recovery of oil and gas reserves from UK waters by enabling it to participate in meetings with operators, facilitate commercial discussions to help secure critical North Sea infrastructure, have access to data and provide dispute resolution.
By reinvigorating our domestic oil and gas industry, we will also reduce our reliance on volatile foreign imports.
The Energy Bill also seeks to close the Renewables Obligation (RO) to new onshore wind developments in Great Britain and put more power in the hands of local people to decide on whether they want this now mature technology in their local communities.