While the North Sea continues to produce a relatively large amount of the world's fossil fuels because most countries produce none or hardly any, in terms of the UK it's not enough.
Even if this wasn't a capitalist country where a million pensioners dying in unheated homes so that one billionaire can charge 10% more to sell their fuel abroad might be justified as "market forces" there simply isn't enough to heat homes and make electricity.
Twenty years ago, if we had the relatively modest need we do today, it would work because the gas production was much greater than today.
But actually twenty years ago we were still burning a lot of coal. We'd stopped burning it in the middle of our biggest cities by then, but a huge percentage of UK electricity was coal fired. Makes CCGT look fucking instant in terms of responsiveness does coal, but that's what we did, very little renewable back then.
If we could magically extract gas only for our own use, and as needed rather than with limited scale, we'd run dry before 2029. We'd get this Xmas, and the next, the one after would be scary as headlines about imminent loss of heat would be on every paper and then it'd be gone by spring and we're screwed.
In reality, we're extracting much more slowly and apparently we're (well, huge foreign companies who pay scarcely any tax) are happy to keep doing that for years.
Even if this wasn't a capitalist country where a million pensioners dying in unheated homes so that one billionaire can charge 10% more to sell their fuel abroad might be justified as "market forces" there simply isn't enough to heat homes and make electricity.
Twenty years ago, if we had the relatively modest need we do today, it would work because the gas production was much greater than today.
But actually twenty years ago we were still burning a lot of coal. We'd stopped burning it in the middle of our biggest cities by then, but a huge percentage of UK electricity was coal fired. Makes CCGT look fucking instant in terms of responsiveness does coal, but that's what we did, very little renewable back then.
If we could magically extract gas only for our own use, and as needed rather than with limited scale, we'd run dry before 2029. We'd get this Xmas, and the next, the one after would be scary as headlines about imminent loss of heat would be on every paper and then it'd be gone by spring and we're screwed.
In reality, we're extracting much more slowly and apparently we're (well, huge foreign companies who pay scarcely any tax) are happy to keep doing that for years.