THE Northern Echo today calls on the Government and bank officials to explain their actions over the loss to the North-East of the £300m SeaDragon project – and the 1,000 jobs it would have created.

Since revealing in January that the SeaDragon oil and gas platform deal was to be pulled from Teesside after part- nationalised Lloyds TSB refused to continue its funding, The Northern Echo has continually been denied answers to the many questions surrounding the issue.

Today, we highlight the nine questions that have not been answered, and call for both Lloyds TSB and the Government to end their silence and explain why the badly-needed jobs and investment have now been exported to Jurong, off Singapore, where construction of the semi-submersible rig will cost at least £110m more than in the UK.

Lloyds TSB, which is 43 per cent owned by the taxpayer, has maintained it cannot comment on individual decisions, despite pleas for the bank to explain why it deems the North-East as being “too risky” for such a project.

And although criticism has mounted on the Government for failing to step in to save the project’s future in the region – both when the contract was pulled from the Tees Alliance Group and when the Tyne Tees Rigs joint venture stepped in with an eleventh-hour rescue bid – it has repeatedly said it cannot intervene in a bank’s commercial decision because of “legal and state aid rules”.

No further explanation has been offered by either Lloyds TSB or the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the Government department that is handling the issue.

Today, The Northern Echo again asks questions that have not been answered – and last night, support flooded in for our demands.