Chamber and committees

That discussion has to be part of the mix. I do not know whether the committee has reached out to have a UK Government minister appear before it.

That is helpful to know. That question could be posed at that meeting. I think that Susie Townend wishes to supplement what I have said.

I thank Mr Whittle for his question. Perhaps the policy barriers to some of those investments were not made clear this morning, but the policy areas are reserved to the UK Government. Perhaps Mr Whittle can raise with UK ministers, as we are doing, the importance of providing policy certainty on the regulation of the usage and transportation of hydrogen. That is part of the recent Energy Act 2023, which was passed at UK level. Mr Whittle will be able to raise that with whichever UK minister comes before the committee. To be fair, this is an area in which I hope we can have close collaboration and a shared understanding of the opportunity that is before us and the need to move quickly, which Mr Whittle mentioned.

That is on the hydrogen part. On the carbon capture part, Mr Whittle will know very well that we need progress to be made on the track 2 status confirmation so that the continued investment can happen. Alongside the use of hydrogen as a fuel, the carbon capture elements are the greatest way of decarbonising the industrial cluster. We have had an aspiration to see progress on carbon capture for years, and we now want to see progress on hydrogen as well.

On the areas for which we are responsible, we will do what we can to progress things as quickly as possible. However, in relation to the barriers that I believe Mr Hardie described earlier, the main responsibilities lie with the UK Government.

The offtake is there, on the site, as was articulated this morning. The production and usage of that on site is to decarbonise the energy supply that the site needs for its processes. That concern about offtake was addressed this morning, I think. It is already—

I assure Ms Tweed that I have regular conversations with individual oil and gas firms about their operations and what I hope will be their continued investment in green energy and the just transition that we want. I also have conversations with industry representatives. I recently had a meeting with Offshore Energies UK and, on the same day, I met the Scottish cluster and parties who are interested in that. To confirm my answer to previous questions, that provided comfort about the fact that the decision to transition from a refinery to an import terminal will not impact on the Scottish cluster.

My understanding is that there is no connection.

To be fair, it was articulated again earlier this morning that the change is about wider macroeconomic conditions, rather than any decision that was made by the Scottish or UK Government, which I assume includes the decisions on the green freeport.

Indeed, and that is exactly why we need a transition for the energy that we use. Alongside the environmental and economic issues, the energy security argument for transitioning our energy dependence away from hydrocarbons to renewable energy that we produce and can source here is pretty obvious, and that is why—

The demand will continue. We know and understand that there will be continued demand for some oil and gas products, but those demands will also diminish over time. In the meantime, the decision taken by the joint venture to invest in the import-export terminal means that energy security is maintained, which is a good thing. You will want to explore that with the UK ministers who have responsibility for that.

I understand that it is important to know when a decision will be taken about the refinery, but we have the assurance that, whenever that decision is taken, the import terminal will continue to give us energy security. That is a vital component in all of this.

In line with what was said earlier, that is an operational matter for Petroineos, which continues to look at ensuring that it can restart the hydrocracker as quickly and safely as possible.