The Rough gas storage tale is typical of Tory ministers’ complacency

theguardian.com:

Here’s an obvious but welcome response to the energy crisis, albeit arriving too late to be properly useful this winter: the Rough gas offshore storage facility, sited 18 miles from the Yorkshire coast, is to be reopened. Permits are approved and Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary until next week, just has to nail down a contract with Centrica, Rough’s owner.

Centrica, it has to be said, enjoys a strong position in the contractual negotiations since everybody wishes Rough hadn’t been mothballed in 2017. But a “cap and collar” financing mechanism that is also fair to taxpayers ought to be achievable. The facility is needed.

But why was a strategic asset, capable of holding 10 days’ worth of UK gas supplies, semi-abandoned in the first place? Well, Centrica at the time cited losses from Rough, including £329m in 2015, and said design and safety factors weighed against funding a £1bn overhaul. So the question is really why the government of the day didn’t negotiate a version of the deal that Kwarteng is rightly pursuing.

For the answer, look at the formal response in February 2019 from Claire Perry, minister responsible for energy security at the time, to questions from the business select committee. It is complacency in policymaking writ large. The government’s rough view on Rough’s closure was that there was nothing to worry about because the market would provide.

The department had run 20-year stress tests and was “confident that we will retain our current high levels of security now and in the future”, wrote Perry. Supporting Rough risked “unintended consequences” such as “undermining the economics” of LNG terminals and interconnectors. The government “was satisfied that the commercial decision to close the facility was