Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Gould. He is very welcome and it is very good to get this overview. It is disappointing that he cannot specifically speak about some of the key policy issues we are facing. I would be interested to know when that country report is due. It would be interesting to know how we as a committee might engage with that. It is also disappointing that Mr. Gould cannot speak specifically about policies. When it comes to our upcoming debate on Deputy Bríd Smith's Bill to end oil and gas exploration, I expect Mr. Collins will be quoting him chapter and verse to argue the need to maintain oil and gas production. I do not want to put words in his mouth, but that is what I would imagine. I am afraid I radically and fundamentally disagree with Mr. Gould. I am disappointed that the IEA seems to be increasingly behind the curve regarding the energy revolution that is taking place and needs to take place. It is increasingly having to update its scenarios, it has underestimated the renewables revolution and so on.

I have a couple of questions to tease out the specific issues about whether we should proceed with on oil and gas exploration. One of the various interesting graphs Mr. Gould showed the committee depicted alignment with the Paris Agreement goals. It very simply shows that there are currently 33 million gigatonnes of emissions from energy use. By a rough reading of the graph, following the trajectory to 2050 rather than 2040, that figure needs to decrease to something like 15 gigatonnes. If that a reduction from 33 gigatonnes to 15 gigatonnes is a global figure, that is, if the globe is more than halving its emissions from energy in that period, what emissions reduction should be sought from a very wealthy western developed country like Ireland, with massive renewable resources? What is the reduction we are likely to see in such a scenario?

There are loads of questions but I am interested in one thing Mr. Gould said at the outset that seems to be true, namely, that the shale revolution is continuing despite the recent lower prices for oil, which are now edging back up. Does Mr. Gould have an estimate of the levelled-out cost of oil production from shale reserves? It is very interesting to see the declining production from current sources set out in Mr. Gould's graph. Does he have any estimate of the volume or scale that shale production could go up to? Obviously there are constraints around water production and energy use.

The other question I have in that regard is on what is Mr. Gould's best estimate of the cost of production from deepwater offshore north Atlantic reserves. Can we compare the cost per barrel of production from shale in North Dakota and the cost per barrel of production from the Porcupine Bank, 200 miles off the west coast of Ireland? Does Mr. Gould have any estimates on that?

The graph showing the contraction of production from current resources is very interesting. Is the oil demand graph based on the sustainable scenarios Mr. Gould talks about? It is. Most of that demand is in petrochemicals, plastics, aviation and shipping. Are there knock-on consequences? I always remember the oil processing industry saying it is necessary that a barrel goes in different locations. If petroleum, kerosene or heavy oil is being lost, the processing industry does not quite work. I am interested in how that is going to work.

Lastly I will come back to my key point. Deputy Bríd Smith and I met with representatives of Oil Change International. Their assessment, which I have no reason to doubt, was that the simple maths of what we need to do to meet the Paris Agreement obligations meant that even existing production from gas and oil fields, as well as coal, must be left in the ground. Why are they wrong while the IEA is right? This is difficult. We are comparing modelling approaches. They presented us with very clear analysis and very simple maths showing why existing production fields have to be left undeveloped.

Lastly, Mr. Gould said that there may be countries that want to maintain oil exploration for strategic reasons. Whatever about 2050, I am sure Mr. Gould will agree that by any analysis, in a country like Ireland there will be zero oil and gas production by 2060. However, we might want to hold onto it as a secure asset or to improve the balance of payments. Can Mr. Gould give examples of those countries? How does Ireland compare with other countries? That argument might apply to a very poor country in the developed world. How can that argument be justified in a country like Ireland, one of the richest countries in the world with a balance of payments among the best in functioning economies? How does it really work as an argument when the oil and gas market is increasingly fungible? Does Mr. Gould think our oil and gas security really is dependent on having our own resources? Thanks to our reaction the Russian gas crisis of the last decade, do we not now have a fungible gas and oil market where such security reasons do not really hold sway in a country like Ireland?