BP hit back at Teesworks in AI data centre row
Plus: Has Ben Houchen been caught out lying twice?
As you read this, edition number 65 of The Teesside Lead, I should be waking up on one of the hottest weekends of the year in the middle of nowhere on the Llŷn peninsula, showing off the fluency of my Welsh language skills in front of my six-year old daughter, only to be responded to by locals in English because I’m from a different part of Wales and my accent is unintelligible to Gwynedd locals.
In this week’s edition, BP have come out swinging against Teesworks, and Redcar Council are even catching strays. Meanwhile, Ben Houchen appears to be caught out in not just one, but two big pork pies this week.
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Leigh
Energy giant BP have hit back at Teesworks and the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) in a lawyer’s letter to energy secretary Ed Miliband, “strongly refuting” accusations they’re not engaging with stakeholders in relation to their planned H2Teesside hydrogen plant.
When operational, BP claims H2Teesside will produce 10% of the UK’s hydrogen supply by breaking down natural gas to its constituent elements. As an infrastructure project of national importance, it’s currently going through the Development Consent Order (DCO) process, in which the secretary of state grants permission, rather than the local authority.
I recently reported how lawyers on behalf of the South Tees Group (STG), which includes Teesworks Ltd and the public STDC, made submissions to the DCO in which they accused BP of refusing to engage with them on discussions about purchasing the land they need for H2Teesside, as well as fully opposing the scheme because they now have their own plans for an AI data centre on the same plot of land.
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council granted permission for the data centre on the afternoon of 1 August, which was also the deadline for stakeholders to make their latest submissions to the DCO process. As a result, Ed Miliband used discretion to allow BP to make submissions after the deadline to respond to the latest developments.
In those submissions, BP’s lawyers have strongly hit back at the accusations of not engaging. They wrote the company “wishes to record that it strongly refutes any suggestion that it has not sought to engage with STG, both in terms of seeking to complete land negotiations, but also in respect of its concerns regarding co-existence of the Proposed Development and STG’s own development proposals.”
They said the energy giant’s last engagement with STG on land matters was on 17 April this year, and that they’ve received no response since then. They argue this is evidence that they need compulsory purchase powers to secure the land they need for H2Teesside. They also criticise STG for inviting BP to develop H2Teesside on the same plot of land they would later make plans for an AI data centre on, in direct conflict with them.
“Teesworks is a large site (with some 2,000 acres of developable land),” write the lawyers, “of which the land required for the Hydrogen Production Facility (that STG had previously advanced for green technologies) forms only one small part.
“As such, there is no reason why STG’s ambitions for Teesworks cannot be developed on other land in and around the Hydrogen Production Facility and it is not clear why STG have focussed on land in close proximity to, and latterly on the same land as, [H2Teesside]”.
If BP is given the power to buy the freehold of the land at Teesworks, it throws a spanner in the works for how land deals have previously been done at the site - whereby Teesworks Ltd which is mostly owned by Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, presently buy the freehold after it’s remediated at public expense, and then lease it out.
Teesworks refused to comment, and STDC did not respond.
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are also criticised in BP’s submission for granting consent for the data centre, saying the application from Teesworks was missing crucial detail like where the power-hungry data centre would get its energy from..“No evidence has been… to demonstrate this is actually the case,” they say.
“There is also no information on water supply for cooling,” they add, “and whether this can or has been secured from the relevant utility provider, which is critical to the safe operation of the data centre.”
A spokesperson for Redcar Council told me: “The views of BPs agents were noted, the planning considerations in respect of the application are set out in the report and it will be noted that outline permission had already been granted in 2022.”
They added that the borough had seen “some of the biggest reductions in carbon emissions anywhere in the country, as a consequence of the closure of the steel works. Given the catastrophic impact that this closure had upon the local economy, it is imperative that the drive to lower emissions is balanced with the need for economic growth.
“The emissions associated with data centres are a consequence of the way in which electricity is generated nationally. Therefore, the greater the overall UK move towards the generation of clean energy, the lower emissions associated with data centres will be.”
When asked if the council had been pressurised to provide consent before the 1 August deadline, they said: “The timing of the Council’s decision is not linked to the procedure of the DCO which is a matter for the Planning Inspectorate.
“All applicants seek to secure prompt decisions on planning applications and the Government expects Councils to deliver an efficient planning service. Officers considered the application was one that was in a position to be determined and so the decision was issued based on the conclusions of the officer report.”
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Ben Houchen and his two pork pies?
As a pedant and a smart-arse whose full-time job has been reporting on the Tees Valley Combined Authority for nearly three years now, one of the things I’ve become used to is seeing Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen deploying verbal sleight of hands, or answering different questions in his own head to those he’s asked, to maintain a kernel of truth in what he’s saying.
A lot of his detractors say he’s a liar, but he’s not technically saying things which are untrue, but this week it looks like he’s been caught out not just once (a rare event in any case) but twice.
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