|
Dear Mr Kunstler,
As someone who works in the UK oil industry, I thought you might be
interested in a view of how prepared the UK is for possible (!) future oil
shortages.I have just finished a stint as an
engineer [company name removed to protect identity of writer] on the
Forties pipeline terminal. Prior to that position I had spent some 30
years working in various parts of the oil and nuclear sectors as a
chemical/process engineer.
The career outlined above has enabled me to gain an
acute insight of how the UK
oil industry is preparing for the (dim) future. Essentially the oil industry
is abandoning the UK.
BP has either sold-off or closed all its UK refineries
( the last one to go was their Grangemouth
refinery) and now only retains the Forties & Sullom
Voe interests. Shell is planning to swap over to
Middle-east crude around 2011 at its single remaining UK refinery
and is busy selling off most of its European refineries. Any questions as to
whether any Middle-east crude will be available to the UK in 2011
are studiously ignored in Shell. The general attitude is one of, 'Since we
will need the oil, it will be available'. All of the above points to the oil
companies foreseeing a pretty bleak future for their UK and
European refining operations.
Within BP, the message from senior management is
that their Forties terminal will still be in operation 20 years from now. What
they fail to mention, even to their own employees is just how little oil and
gas will be coming out of the North sea
then. This is quite weird given that North Sea
production dropped another 10% last year, despite Buzzard crude coming
ashore. The value of that oil will certainly sustain the future of the
terminal, they just might not be able to send the
petrol tankers out too far. Quite cute really.
With much of the thinking inside the UK oil
industry often delusional, outside of it we pretty much in La-La land. Both
the government and the media are obsessed with global warming. Barely an
evening passes without a news item relating to icebergs melting, heat stroke
in Polar bears or the sad absence of lichen for reindeer etc. Inside the oil
industry it is well known that the UK government is regularly
briefed by the oil companies. Evidently the government have
made the decision to use global warming as a way of encouraging thrift in oil
usage - with absolutely no effect.
What is never mentioned in the media
is the crashing of North Sea oil
production. A recent documentary about oil exploration in the Arctic managed to completely overlook why such
desperate measures might be required. When the oil industry is
(occasionally) discussed, it is invariably on the basis that oil now
only forms 10 to 15% of the UK
economy, given that the City of London
has become so important. ( I know that will make you laugh)
In terms of politics, the Labour party
evidently regard discussions about oil depletion as near treason, whilst
the Tory party is still proud of the way they defeated the miners. Neither
party is exactly in the right frame of mind to restart the nuclear industry
or open up new coal mines.
Perhaps the worst aspect of the UK shitstorm in preparation, is the way the Labour party is allowing and
even encouraging supermarkets to destroy farming in the UK. (Farmers
generally hate the Labour party as being a bunch of clueless idiots - quite
perceptive really). Agricultural production has dropped disastrously in
recent years, with thousands of farmers being forced into bankruptcy by the
monopolies enjoyed by the likes of Tesco (big and
nasty) and Sainsbury (smaller and nasty). At least the USA still has
a huge amount of good land available. In the UK, we are packed in like
sardines in terms of population density, which spells disaster when the oil
gets short.
Regards,
(Anonymous)
By :
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com/
James
Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature
writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling
Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis.
His
latest nonfiction book, "The Long
Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the
21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic
crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive
dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the
American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of
the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller
places and eat locally grown food.
You
can purchase your own copy here : The Long
Emergency . You can get more from James Howard Kunstler - including his artwork, information about his
other novels, and his blog - at his Web site : http://www.kunstler.com/
| 
