Madam,

As your readers will know from your well-researched columns, the oil and gas company Eni put in an application for a licence to seismically test in Cardigan Bay, this May.

Thanks to united action by local residents, they withdrew this within two weeks.

Their justification report used the Welsh Assembly’s Welsh National Marine Plan as key in supporting their case. They quoted the plan (in full in Section 7 of Eni’s EIA ) which lauds “optimizing the economic development and recovery of UK oil & gas resource in order to provide Welsh and wider UK businesses and consumers with a secure and resilient supply of fossil fuels”.

This clause must be deleted from the plan, which is in draft form, but will be set in stone this month. The clause contradicts absolutely the declaration by the Welsh Assembly of a climate emergency, which they hoped “would trigger a wave of action” (Lesley Griffiths).

We have 18 months to change policy in order to halt the rise in global temperatures before we arrive at the tipping point, after which there is no return (to quote the Prince of Wales at a Commonwealth reception last month).

We have 20 billion barrels of oil in the North Sea that we already know about - far more than we can ever safely use.

Please could readers write with utmost urgency to Lesley Griffiths (Correspondence. Lesley.Griffiths@ gov.wales), copying in Elin Jones (elin.jones@assembly. wales), or by post to them at the National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff Bay CF99 1NA, calling for the clause to be removed?

In response to my letter this month, she has simply reiterated the position that “the licensing of offshore petroleum is not devolved”. This is no reason for retaining the clause. Offshore powers must be campaigned for, but the WNMP must simply follow through its declared intention to get out of fossil fuels. In response to questions about fossil fuel extraction along the Welsh coastline in the Assembly (4 June), First Minister Mark Drakeford replied that “the Welsh government opposes the extraction and consumption of all fossil fuels”. How can Lesley Griffiths find it acceptable or logical to retain the clause?

Yours etc, Susanna Kenyon, Address supplied.

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