Speeches by Shanks.

“I have been working with the Treasury and with the Exchequer Secretary, who joined me for the last roundtable I had with industry a few weeks ago. We are aware of the need to move quickly. I would recognise the point that, at this moment in particular, we should underscore how important the four remaining refineries th…”

“I did not see the evidence earlier, but I know that, previously, the industry has confirmed that there would not be a penny off bills due to further extraction in the North sea.”

“You are right. There are consequences from what is happening in the middle east that will be felt around the world. There are probably a number of these things that will follow through over a number of weeks. We are hoping that it will de-escalate soon, and you are absolutely right to say that there will be impacts fro…”

“I think it has. It will have been felt on bills, but not as often as it should be.”

“Good evening. It is good to be with you again, Chair, on this really important subject. On refineries, I brought all of them together for the first time in 13 years to have conversations about what the future of the refining sector would look like. We are working on a future of fuel strategy. A consultation has gone ou…”

“We are absolutely not. That is not from a point of us not taking very seriously the risks that there are at the moment and managing the situation carefully, but we are monitoring it. All the data that we have is that, because we have a strong and diverse range of supplies, we are not concerned about it. It does not mea…”

“We learn from those situations. Ofgem has a role in making sure the market is as resilient as possible, and looking at individual companies as part of that. Ofgem has introduced higher capital requirements on companies to demonstrate that they are more resilient than they might otherwise have been. There is a lot more …”

“We are investing significant amounts in building the system of the future, so there often are costs that come down on bills that are matched by investments that we have to make, particularly on grid, so that we can keep the system as resilient as it is. If you take an average of the price cap in 2025 to 2024 in real te…”

“We absolutely are looking at options in that space. I hope that people would expect us to be looking right now at every option that is on the table. If something deals with a particular problem now, but maybe is not the long-term answer, we will absolutely look at it. There are mechanisms in place that will support som…”

“I have to say that I take the exact opposite view. It reinforces the fact that we need to move off fossil fuels much more quickly. We remain exposed to fossil fuels for as long as we are reliant on them. I have said very clearly that the oil and gas industry has contributed an enormous amount to this country, and we sh…”

“I am not sure what you mean by “emergency”.”

“It is worth saying that marginal pricing is a natural market. Our view is that gas should not be setting the price, so we need to do everything possible to de-link those two. We are looking at a range of options in this space, but it is worth saying that the clean power mission will de-link naturally as we build more. …”

“No, I do not think you should at all.”

“There is slightly more to it than that. There have been officials appointed to look at this question, and they are working through that work. It is not that the decision has been taken not to do anything. Work is going on. It will just take slightly longer than I would like. It is worth saying that the inclusion of CBA…”

“We are not putting a timeline on it, but the information has been received from the developers, the process has been followed by the regulator, and decisions will be made.”

“I cannot speak specifically about the strait of Hormuz. Jonathan might be able to. I would say that, generally, on the risk register, we take account of disruption to supply chains. I do not know whether we specify down to that, but we look at different scenarios and where different fuel types might be affected by inte…”

“The balance of publishing these things is always weighed in favour of people appreciating that we recognise these risks against the risk that people consider that those risks are more likely than they might be. It is obviously important that the Government consider every possible risk, even if it is very unlikely to ha…”

“We absolutely should be moving as fast as possible on everything, but there is a particular case to be made for bringing more flex on faster. We announced this week that we would start a trial of being able to utilise so-called “wasted” wind—the wind that we currently pay to turn off in areas of high constraints—so tha…”

“We carefully considered this. This was a proposal that was put forward without consultation with Government from Ming Yang. We welcome investment from China, as we have announced in the past few months, when it is in the national interest. When the Prime Minister was in Beijing, we have seen a lot of inward investment …”

“It is a timely question. I was at Hunterston B, the nuclear power station in Ayrshire, last week, which has just been handed back to the Government for decommissioning, because we are taking a different approach to how we will decommission our nuclear assets to be as efficient, cost-efficient and fast as possible, but …”