Quote:
Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith
Why is the UK reliant on imported oil and gas, when it has its own oil and gas reserves?
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The strategic gas reserve, the Rough storage facility, was closed in 2017 after the government refused to pay out for preventative maintenance - it was deemed to costly to continue using. So we now have no "buffer". Aside from that, the UK was only ever a net exporter of oil & gas for a short period in the 80s and 90s (I think, I'm sure Peter will correct me if that's wrong!), and now between 50 and 60% of our gas is imported either via pipeline, or via LNG tankers from further afield.
Our oil reserves are a different story. Crude oil differs from field to field, some is very "heavy" and some is "light"; when distilled in a refinery they produce dramatically different proportions of the compounds within. Some crude produces lots of petrol, some lots of diesel/kerosene, some lots of naphtha, some is very waxy, some contains lots of sulphur. As a result one country can't provide their entire needs from a single source, so sell some of theirs and import from other sources.
[note that the preceding paragraph ignores catalytic cracking or steam reforming to make heavy chain hydrocarbons smaller]
On top of that, some of the North Sea oil fields have become financially non-viable to keep operating, so there aren't as many productive wells now as there once were.
Not a simple answer, and I'm glossing over a lot of complexity, but that's more or less right.