A slanted, and highly suspect, letter on UK oil and nuclear energy

Let's get CANDID. The truth is the jerks at the top are making HUGE PROFIT$ by investing in NUCLEAR ENERGY these days - from everything from mining, to investing in nuclear facilities - and this includes goverment "employees" who soon discover what a high rate of return they can get for every dollar invested in uranium and copper mining stocks. So of course they want to paint a picture of doom and gloom when it comes to OIL and GAS exploration.

The truth is this: the guys in the nuclear energy "industry" are deluded and maybe WORST of them all.

Nuclear energy is expaning and the oil companies are buying right into it and making HUGE money off the same. So this man's bafflement at the UK's policy is sorta wrongheaded. His disclaimer of the UK parties being FOR nuclear energy is just plain stoopid. Sellafield's been around a LONG time, folks ...

Too BAD about the UK farms, but what did the bulk of UK folks expect when they sat on their hands and did NOTHING about Sellafield? Hmmm?

Believe me the World Rulers have a PLAN and it is nuclear energy regardless of the risks to them and their children. I think they think they'll just get right lucky and not be incinerated themselves, never remembering that LOW LEVEL RADIATION is just as deadly.

Letter from an employee in the British oil industry:

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)