Crown Estate needs to be independently regulated

By Graham Ruddick, City Reporter Published: 6:30AM GMT twenty-five February 2010

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Roddy Monroe, representing application companies anticipating to set up eight critical gas storage projects in the UK, told the Treasury sub-committee yesterday that the rents the Crown Estate wants for intensity offshore gas storage sites is melancholy the monetary viability of projects.

"If we discuss it them their rents are as well expensive, they contend go onshore," Mr Monroe, the authority of the Gas Storage Operators Group, that includes Centrica, National Grid, EON, and EDF, said. "If ever there was a box for regulatory oversight, this is it. We have nowhere to go."

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Mr Monroe was vocalization at the initial day of an exploration in to the activities of The Crown Estate, whose revenues are paid to the Treasury.

The organization has a �6bn portfolio that encompasses skill on Regent Street, farmland, and Britain"s coastline.

However, it has come underneath extreme critique from appetite groups, who explain it is working as a monopoly.

The Crown Estate insists it has a avocation to lapse revenues to the Treasury and has brought in consultants to assistance it set satisfactory let prices.