Kunstler: Letter from an employee in the British oil industry

energybulletin.net :

- A letter from a British oil industry employee to Jim Kunstler :

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 ...

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