Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 16, between lines 17 and 18, to insert the following:“(c) the requirement for any operator, who is granted an exploration licence or petroleum prospecting licence by the Minister, to put a bond in place, so that in the event of the decommissioning of petroleum infrastructure, the licensee not dismantling the infrastructure within 2 years of extraction being stopped, all cost associated with the decommissioning can be recouped by the State from the bond;”.

This amendment relates to an issue which I raised with the Minister on the last occasion he was in this House. We can learn a lot from the housing crisis. Section 3(b) refers to the modification and decommissioning of petroleum infrastructure. However, nowhere in the Bill is reference made to who will bear the cost of clean-up in that regard. Ultimately, the taxpayer will have to meet that cost unless provision is made in law that an oil and gas extraction company will bear it.

The amendment seeks to ensure that anybody given a licence by the Minister will put in place a bond which could be accessed by the State in situations where a platform is decommissioned but not dismantled within two years. I am not suggesting the amendment as drafted is to the satisfaction of the Attorney General. The Minister of State will, I am sure, have had the experience when on the Opposition benches of being told proposals were not in compliance with the Constitution or to the satisfaction of the Attorney General. I wonder if the current Attorney General is aware of how often that office is mentioned in the context of reasons for not doing something.

For the same reason that there is a bond in place in respect of developers of housing estates, I believe it is entirely practical that in the event of a company not decommissioning an oil and gas platform local authorities would have access to a bond in respect of any infrastructural work in that regard. Otherwise, the taxpayer will have to foot the bill for that work. It does not make sense not to provide that a bond be put in place. It is not that it is prohibitive. Oil and gas companies are supposed to decommission platforms. However, I do not know if they are obliged under current law to do so. If such a provision exists, I have not come across it. Also, in the event of an oil and gas company being deemed insolvent and having no assets that could be seized and sold to ensure no loss to the State, from where would the State get the necessary funding in respect of the decommissioning of a platform? I await the Minister of State's response to the introduction of this very practical measure. As a requirement for a bond has been already been put in place in respect of the construction industry, I see no reason a similar measure cannot be put in place for the oil and gas industry in respect of the decommissioning of oil and gas platforms, the cost of which would be hundreds of millions of euro. A bond is a very practical solution and would not cost the State anything.