On BBC One Scotland at 22:45 this evening (Wed 4th June) Hayley Millar explores the history and future of North Sea oil and reasons for the recent run up in the oil price in the documentary Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland.

Watch a clip here.

On BBC Two, Newsnight Scotland (23:00) will host a live debate on Peak Oil featuring an interview with Chris Skrebowski and discussion with Bill Jamieson (Executive Editor of The Scotsman) and Euan Mearns (Editor of The Oil Drum Europe).

These transmissions are on the Scottish regional versions of BBC One and Two, but anyone with a satellite receiver in the UK should be able to find the Scottish versions on Sky channels 971 and 990.

UK oil production peaked at 2.9 million barrels per day in 1999 and now stands at 1.6 million barrels per day. This is below UK oil consumption levels making the UK an oil importer.

Extended from the European Tribune version, which was itself inspired by earlier coverage here on TOD. More relevant background can be found in these two articles from a few months ago: UK Energy security and The European Gas Market, both by Euan Mearns.

Now that the news that the Forties pipeline has to close down is known, the blame game has started:

UK resists fuel curbs despite strike The UK is “nowhere near” having to impose emergency powers to restrict fuel supplies to essential users, the government insisted on Sunday, despite a strike forcing the closure of a pipeline that carries nearly half of Britain’s North Sea oil. (...) But the Conservatives sought to make political capital from the unrest. On Sunday, they argued that the strike was a byproduct of his weakness. “Whether it is teachers or whether it is oil workers or whoever else, they’re actually saying we can push this guy around,” David Cameron told the BBC. The Tory leader argued that Mr Brown was indirectly to blame for the dispute because of his changes as chancellor to employer pension schemes. “Who is the man who wrecked the British pension system? He is the prime minister,” Mr Cameron said. The Grangemouth workers are protesting over the company’s intention to close their final-salary pension scheme to new employees from August 1. Ineos has offered to suspend plans to make existing employees start making contributions, pending further talks.

I'd like to flag just a few points that seem to be typical of our times, and maybe warrant making this a symptom of the Anglo Disease, ie the wholesale domination of our economies by reckless financial capitalism:

Hmm! Maybe the next book review I’ll do will be “The Boy’s King Arthur.” Well actually, given the controversy about him (he was a Celt and they ultimately lost – after he died - so he has been relegated to mythical status. The winners write the history books), perhaps that might not be such a good idea. I recently looked at an NRC survey showing the classes of disciplines at a University and while history had more than 8 subdivisions as I remember, there was no mention of energy per se, or most of the energy production disciplines – so just imagine the columns of controversy I might generate. But it also speaks, by itself, to how important certain issues are ranked in the corridors of the mighty.

So let’s get back to the status of the world of oil. And while, as one of the recent conferees noted, the public thinks that, since prices having dropped back “we survived the energy crisis,” sadly the world picture is really getting worse. Sometimes, when I have looked at what we have projected, I have consoled myself with the thought to myself along the lines of “well these are the lower estimates, it really isn’t going to be that bad.” Unfortunately the numbers that are now starting to pop up hold no such comfort, and are beginning to confirm what our contributors have been predicting for a while.

More data from the DTI. On 26th Oct '06 the DTI updated their monthly oil statistics. The Excel spreadsheet is available here: Excel link. Hat tip Nick Rouse for bringing this to my attention.

The key quote is:

Oil production in the period June 2006 to August 2006 was 12.1 per cent lower than a year ago.

This isn't good news and perhaps we are becoming weary of such announcements however there is a little more we can say about these recent numbers...