I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am not surprised because I was aware of that, but it is regrettable. The CAA should, first, do much more to complete its findings and, secondly, move to reassure all of those who rely on helicopter transport out to the offshore rigs in the North sea.
It would be wrong to think of this solely as a north-east of Scotland industry; that has been demonstrated by the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), whose constituency is in Teesside. This is a UK industry—indeed, a global one—that has contributed over £330 billion to the British economy, supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the United Kingdom and has a supply chain worth nearly £30 billion, stretching into every nation, region and community across our islands, servicing both domestic activities and exporting almost £12 billion of goods and services to other basins around the world.
Globally, we see British energy companies engaged in work in Mozambique, where, with UK Government support, we are exploiting one of the largest and most recently discovered natural gas fields in the world. In the gulf of Mexico, in the Persian Gulf across the middle east and into the Mediterranean, from Vietnam to Australia, western Africa and the south Atlantic—all those places and more, we find people trained in using technology invented in and working for companies with bases in the United Kingdom.
However, the industry is not without its challenges. It is still emerging from one of the deepest and most sustained downturns in its history. The oil price crash of 2014 to 2016 saw an oil price drop of 70%, which had a huge effect on the industry, particularly in the north-east of Scotland, with many people retraining and leaving the industry altogether. Many of the smaller support companies struggled to survive; some did not. Some, particularly in the supply chain, are not out of the woods yet, but, as I said, resilience, inventiveness and ingenuity are bywords for the oil and gas industry in the United Kingdom and, alongside UK Government support to the tune of £2.3 billion, including investment in the Oil & Gas Technology Centre and the global underwater hub, the industry is confident about its future. We need it to be, for it is from this industry that the skills, technology and investment will come if we are to maximise economic recovery from the basin and reach our target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Many people who do not know the industry—or, indeed, the people in it—might expect it to be averse, even hostile, to the Government’s climate change targets, but nothing could be further from the truth. One need only speak, as I have in recent weeks, to companies such as Total, BP or Equinor, the people at the Oil & Gas Innovation Centre, the technologists and engineers of
the Oil & Gas Technology Centre, and the industry body itself, Oil and Gas UK, to learn that the industry is not only not averse to the challenge, but actively embracing it. I recommend the ambitious industry plan Roadmap 2035 to anyone who doubts the industry’s commitment to leading the way, embracing the change and engaging with the challenge as we strive towards net zero, committing the UK continental shelf to be a net zero basin by 2050.
That will, of course, require significant investment and new technology, but it cannot happen in a vacuum and the industry cannot do it by itself. It is committed to developing carbon capture and storage, making it work and making it affordable. That needs to happen. According to the Committee on Climate change, some 175 million tonnes of CO2 a year will have to be stored and captured in the UK alone by 2050 if we are even to come close to meeting our targets.