North Sea oil

Imagine if we'd included Germans and, and French people in the Brexit referendum.

Uh, so I, I don't know whether or not I've been gaslit in that sense, whether the, the, the old arguments about the eco-- oh, you wouldn't be able to survive, and then you come back and say, "But we'd have all the North Sea oil." I, I, I don't know.

I don't even know if we're talking about that today.

We might be talking about something that runs rather deeper.

Mm.

So I, I... you know, I know, I know the two countries very well.

And, uh, and sp-specifically, there, there was a report, uh, uh, called the Macroney Report, which was- Commissioned by Westminster in 1974 into the, uh, when North Sea oil was first discovered.

And, uh, if, if you all- allow me to, uh, just quote a wee line from it just to elucidate just, uh, why there's such a economic injustice, uh, uh, specifically at, at that time as well.

The government had to stand back.

And the IMF imposed conditions and various left-wing parties members of the cabinet such as Michael Foote resigned because they couldn't condone this and we were very lucky because shortly after that we had North Sea Oil that came along and that got us out of the hole effectively, a combination of IMF forcing discipline on the government and the lucky discovery of North Sea oil getting us out of the hole.

I mean, we were extremely lucky.

This time, The IMF has not got just us to deal with.

We talk about how governments just can't curb public spending.

We talk about how to invest in North Sea oil and about how prepared the UK is, or is not, for war.

Hope you enjoy.

His daughter wrote that, didn't he? Good.

He'd say that was absurd.

Yeah.

Which brings us back to North Sea Oil.

Right, thank you to my wonderful guests and thank you for being really the best audience of the week.

They're going to revisit their ownership of how big their portfolio.

And folks, Norway, because of North Sea Oil, they have a sovereign wealth fund that's over $2 trillion.

That would be for 5 million Norwegians.

And as you know, Philip, they're among the savviest investors in the world.

That's the difference.

Burnham was talking again because of, I mean, you coined net stupid zero, didn't you, that talking about, again, kicking the decision on North Sea oil down the road for political reasons, because clearly we're screaming for some kind of relief on energy, are we not? I mean, is it not the case that we now have a prime minister, we have a government which is ideologically wedded to net zero, which is antithetical to the needs of what the British people desperately need at the moment?

Yes, I mean, the government's tried to do a bit of a shuffle of some of the costs into general taxation, but that's the reality.

The Ofgem cap is going up 4% in October.

You may remember that I was studying geophysics at uni when we last spoke back in 2021, 2022.

Well, I went on to use my degree to get a job in the oil and gas sector.

For the last three of my four years in work, I've been working on drilling projects for North Sea Oil.

I felt proud to be working on projects that were helping to get our country energy security in an ever-evolving and fractured world, battling 78% tax rates to try and justify accessing oil on home turf and developing scientific technology alongside.

Um, wasn't, wasn't aware that I'd be called.

Um, does the First Minister agree with me that the North Sea oil and gas industry is currently hanging by a thread? And if so, will he now show leadership to come out and support our oil and gas industry by unambiguously supporting Jackdaw and Rosebank and new exploration drilling?

First Minister.

Presiding Officer, I've, I've been very open with Parliament about my view in relation to oil and gas developments in the North Sea.

You have to think in the short term as well, not also the long term sometimes.

How can you help ease that burden for people and he is considering he is considering the North Sea Oil isn't he and maybe potentially drilling do you think his MPs will allow him to do that

Well, that is a really good question.

I'm hoping that they're so buoyed by their, from being completely dead and buried at the next general election to now looking like they've got a fighting chance, they behave in a sensible and pragmatic way and realise that he's probably right and he's basically sent off Ed Miliband to go and be foreign secretary, get out of the country and don't come back for a few years, buddy, so that he could be slightly more pragmatic about these things.

So the industry's been nationalized.

There are rationalizations, cuts, and one of the few glimmers of hope for the Swedish shipbuilding industry is North Sea oil exploration.

Because though Sweden itself does not have North Sea oil, it doesn't border the North Sea, its shipyards become hubs of new activity that service Norwegian and British, and to a lesser degree, Dutch and German offshore oil exploration.

So the vessel is built in this nationalized yard, but it's commissioned by someone who's really an arch capitalist, the Norwegian shipping magnate, who has understood that there are loopholes in the Norwegian tax code that allow him to set up- Limited liability partnerships to avoid paying what are really, really high marginal income tax rates in Norway, and we're talking ninety, ninety-five percent marginal income tax rates.

So from the very beginning, the barge is a product of state-led industrial capitalism, but also private enterprise, and that pairing and that interplay is something that is gonna repeat over and over throughout the course of the barge's time.

And so this vessel is built in the late '70s.

By the late 1970s, these Shipbuilders are confronting a huge contraction in orders from foreign clients.

That is why these Swedish shipbuilders look to the North Sea oil industry as a possible ray of light that's going to save their ability to keep producing anything at all.