The UK gets virtually no oil from the north sea, it mainly comes in from places like baku and the CIS now, it is cheaper to do that than spend millions on getting the dregs from the north sea. This is the theory anyway.
In reality there is as much oil under the north sea as there was when they first hit upon it back in the 60`s and 70`s, they keep finding new fields of oil and gas all the time. But it does require some extraction where as back in the early days it would come up under its own pressure, now we have to pump gas down into the well to create that pressure, that costs £££ but it is still profitable, just not as profitable as moving out to iraq, baku etc. There will be very little paid in the way of tax over there either as there is a lot of corruption within the governments and things are let go for a bit of cash.
It is also rumoured that bandits were employed by a major oil company in nigeria (beginns with S ends in hell) to come aboard a platform and take a few hostages for a number of days in a bid to deter other oil companies setting up in those waters.
I dont like paying inflated prices for oil etc and it is the government who are shafting us. Oil has not increase by 30% since christmas but the price at the pump has
