The chair of the Isle of Man Climate Change Transformation Board, Daphne Caine MHK, this week said extracting gas from the island’s territorial waters could damage its global reputation.

Mrs Caine recently attended the global climate conference COP26 in Glasgow on behalf of the island, as delegated by Chief Minister Alfred Cannan MHK.

She said told Manx Radio this week that whilst the ultimate decision may be ’above her pay grade’ she doesn’t think any existing proposals should come to fruition.

She said: ’The message from COP was loud and clear: "You should not be extracting any fossil fuels".

’This is not the time.

’That would only add to our emissions.

’Also any money that the island stands to make from that exploration would likely need to be spent offsetting against the emissions it generated, so from a climate perspective it’s a complete no-no.’

The chief executive of local energy company Crogga, Diccen Sargent, has hit back at Mrs Caine’s claims, arguing that extracting natural gas from the Manx seabed would actually decrease the Isle of Man’s carbon footprint.

Crogga claims there is £10 billion worth of gas which could be recovered.

He said: ’There is a large hole in this green narrative that we have today, that we can turn off all of the fossil fuels immediately and unfortunately we can’t.

’If we want to have energy on our grids on demand, when we want it, then we need to increase and add renewables as much as we can, but we need to balance that grid, and that requires, for the moment, still the use of natural gas.

’That will continue right throughout the transition period.’

Mrs Caine kept diary entries while attending COP26, which are available to read in full at iomtoday.co.im