'Stick-and-stick' approach in U.K.

David Knott
London
[email protected]

Governments often use a carrot-and-stick approach to regulating the petroleum industry: if encouragement does not work, then punishment is applied.

The U.K. government prefers a "stick-and-stick" approach, giving oil and gas companies little hope for encouragement ahead of legislation on fuels for power generation (OGJ, July 6, 1998, p. 35).

One announcement last week shows Westminster appears happy to ignore enlightened thinking in setting policy, while a second is further evidence of the government's capacity to make legislative U-turns.

On July 20, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott unveiled "the most radical reform of transport policy in a generation."

Prescott's white paper proposes raising £1 billion/year ($1.6 billion/year), from an unspecified date, by charging drivers for entering cities, using motorways and trunk roads, and using workplace parking slots.

This money will be plowed back into maintaining roads, subsidizing bus services (bus services having been privatized), and subsidizing rail services (railways, too, having been privatized).

Balance claim

This "most radical" plan is intended to tackle pollution and congestion on Britain's roads by levying charges to boost the use of public transport.

"No one really believes," said Prescott, "that we can allow traffic growth to go unchecked, when projections show that the growth of the motor vehicle (fleet) is going to be about 30% in 20 years.

"That is bad for our economy, bad for our health, and disastrous for our environment, and that's why I believe people are ready to accept our radical approach."

Increasing taxes on a relatively cheap form of transport and using those revenues to subsidize more expensive and-as private owners fail to invest to maintain services-increasingly unreliable public transport is not radical.

A radical policy would encourage automakers to develop non-polluting vehicles more quickly and fuel makers to develop new fuels. It would encourage improved alternatives to cars, too.

No one in overcrowded Britain would argue against curbing road traffic, but wouldn't a tax on total vehicle horsepower per household be a truly radical way of ensuring that fewer and smaller cars use the roads?

Dumping U-turn

The U.K. also made a U-turn over platform dumping ahead of the Oslo-Paris Convention meeting of environment ministers in Sintra, Portugal, on July 22-23.

Ospar countries met to debate maritime issues, including what to do with decommissioned oil and gas platforms. The U.K. government had, until July 17, not ruled out dumping platforms at sea.

But John Battle, minister for science, energy, and industry, said, "Careful analysis of the science, technology, and costs convinced me that it will normally be practicable to remove and recycle all the smaller steel structures, all topsides, and the great majority of each and every big steel structure. The practicability of removing the reinforced footings will be considered on a case-by-case basis. There will be no toppled debris remaining and no local or remote dumping."

The Brent spar debacle showed that deep-sea dumping is ultimately an emotional issue. So whatever the scientific arguments, it would have saved time and money if careful analysis had enabled government to take this firm stance sooner.