Britain will rely on gas for decades to come, Centrica’s boss said yesterday after it backed a £1.5billion deal to buy Europe’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.

Centrica, the owner of British Gas, and US infrastructure investor Energy Capital Partners have agreed to acquire the facility at Grain, on the Kent banks of the Thames Estuary, from National Grid, subject to regulatory approval.

They said the site ‘will be able to provide up to 33 per cent of UK gas demand and so is a critical piece of our energy security infrastructure’.

And Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea told the BBC: ‘I do think that gas will be a key part of the energy transition for decades to come.’

It comes as Labour’s aim to shift away from oil and gas runs into trouble, with a drive to use more wind power in particular facing increasing challenges.

Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has banned the issuing of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

Critics argue that gas will be vital to fulfil demand – in a less polluting way than oil and coal – at a time when the capacity of renewable sources and infrastructure is still being built up.

The Grain site imports and stores gas, and supplies European energy markets with customers including Centrica, Shell and Qatar Energy.

O’Shea said: ‘We’ll have more wind and we’ll have more solar but there are points where we don’t have enough sun, we don’t have enough wind.

‘You need to have something that when you don’t have your renewables you need to be able to turn on your electricity generation and gas is the best way that we’ve got that now.’

The acquisition comes soon after Centrica announced it was investing £1.3billion for a 15 per cent stake in the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk.

LNG, which is chilled to minus-162C (minus-259F) and transported on specialist ships, has become increasingly important to Europe since imports from Russia were cut off following the invasion of Ukraine. 

The fuel met 15 per cent of the UK’s gas demand last year. That is expected to soar to about 60 per cent by 2050.

Centrica’s equity investment totals about £200million as it will also take on £1.1billion of debt.

The shift to renewable energy is being hit by US President Donald Trump who has promised to ban new wind farms and recently branded turbines ‘a con job’.

Shares in Danish wind giant Orsted nosedived this week after it tapped up investors for £7billion to plug a financial hole, blaming its struggles on Trump’s policies.

Separately, UK figures showed how wind farm operators were paid £117million this year to stop producing energy that could have powered every home in Scotland for six months.