Or for that matter, a threat to national security for a lot of countries involved. Why on earth would you want to prolong your dependence on hostile governments?
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You donāt.
Which is why you invest in renewables. Not all countries have a coast, but everyone has sun and wind.
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With the best will in the world, Iām reading that weāre likely to be oil dependent for at least another 30 years.
Legacy oil reserves continually deplete and cost more to extract as a result.
Surprised that on this basis, and the country in itās current financial state, anyone would prefer the import of oil option, concurrently destroying an industry and costing a couple of hundred thousand jobs.
Genius 
Another 30 years of oil dependency is nailing on the collapse of western civilisation.
This is the maddening thing about the climate change debate. Itās always āā¦but jobsā or āā¦but the economyā or āā¦I need my carā.
All those things are irrelevant next to the planet ability to sustain us.
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Isnāt that what Thatcher told the miners?
While I agree with your wider comments, we donāt use the oil we produce directly, itās exported isnāt it?
I think all oil is sold on the international market.
Isnāt it a different type to the one we usually import and use though?
Actually, it explicitly wasnāt. There were members of her cabinet that were looking at skills transfers but Thatcher was simply focused on crushing āthe enemy withinā.
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Please correct me if Iām wrong, but everything Iāve read about new O&G licences in the UK will not come online in time to service the demand, and will mostly be sold into foreign markets anyway? If so, how will this help the situation?
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A branch of my family had a history of working in the mines in the NE. My uncle died with health related issues in his late 40s. My cousin says Thatcher saved him from the same fate as he had started down the mines too ā¦ he got grants to set up his own building business. Did rather well. Not a defence of Mrs T but an insight into just one personās story.
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I wasnāt around then, I donāt have a stake in the issue, but isnāt the bigger problem not that the mines were closed, but there werenāt alternatives nor support for those who lost their jobs?
Yes.
Closet Tory alert
There seems to be an ill informed view that once we get all our electricity from wind/solar, have found a cleaner means to heat our homes and are no longer driving ICEās that there will be no need for oil.
Probably as much as 90% of the everyday items people canāt/wonāt do without are derived from oil.
So my point is, that if we still need to use it, for whatever purpose, why rely 100% on importing it when we can produce & use or produce and trade with it.
I think thatās where there also has to be a massive societal shift to consume less of those things, and do what we can to recycle where we canāt. Move back towards making things that last, instead of disposable items.
I donāt disagree with that point, except like I mentioned, unless thereās evidence that the benefits of O&G extraction can be shown to accrue to the population at large instead of the companies that extract it, then it shouldnāt be done. The evidence thus far is that whatever is extracted in the UK ultimately gets exported and not made into any other goods in the UK.
I think I posted it on here before but during the miners strike I helped a few of the miners out with a collection on Church Street. The one thing that struck me is that they all had some sort of respiratory illness. It did make me wonder what the alternatives were.
At the time they were looking at inward investment to allow for cross-skilling. The Nissan plant in the NE was a good example of this because many of the workers were (previously) employed in the failing shipbuilding industry on the Wear. The miners didnāt get this kind of assistance for the most part. I suspect this was partly because they were more spread out. The problem was that there were a lot of communities that lost there raison dāetre.
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Problem with societal change is, it involves people and people are and will continue to be selfish creatures.
Oil is and will continue to be used to manufacture so many things that are not disposable.
I donā;t have the figures, and genuinely canāt be arsed trying to find them, but Iād wager a lot of products are manufactured here which are oil derived.
Chances are also, that they will continue to be needed or their technological upgrades in the future.
Nonetheless, even if we just use extracted hydrocarbons as a trading comodity in the future for essential and less harmful to the environment products, once its use in energy or transport has been ābannedā, it would be ludicrous not to do so.
Be like saying, look whisky gets people drunk lets stop making it.
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Is Rishi PM0.5?
Thatās a far more fair objective statement. No one in their right mind should think that this world is not heading for climate destruction. But gluing yourselves to paintings and blocking traffic are not going to get more people on your side.