OIL; the UK is setting itself up for failure


Barack Obama has characterised attitudes to oil as 'shock and trance'. Prices soar upwards; people get shaken; prices fall, people get careless. Such is everyday life. Yet recent reports confirm that existing oil fields are declining, and at an accelerating rate.

This means that new sources of oil need to be developed. But there are none at cheap prices. In addition, with banks in the state they are in, and with investors drawing in their horns, there is no money to build the new rigs, or even to do the drilling tests, to locate and extract new deposits.

This situation could become critical with any improvement in the global economy, anywhere, or indeed sooner. It could become important sooner because countries are not squeezing as much oil as possible out of existing fields.

The Biggest offender is the UK. England is a country prone to short-term and faddist attitudes, and always has been. At the minute, that means no new investment in existing North Sea pipelines or rigs. These are decaying. Private companies, quite reasonably, don't want to spend a lot on them. Government has an interest in doing so.

If we can throw money away after bankers, and literally waste it on windmills, with a very cold winter predicted and with evidence of global cooling all around--why can't Britain invest in energy thrift?

Shock and trance, it seems, does not just apply to America. When I was at school, I played truant from pointless PE lessons, and when I didn't go to the football supporter's club with my dad, I tried to learn Russian. I wanted to read Pushkin, in my priggish way, and later came to love Baratynsky poems too, but only in translation. Physical Education broke before I learned the verbs.

Perhaps I should get my old books out, since we'll all be begging Putin for gas. Of course, we could always build nuclear stations and reopen the mines....