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Brown urges increased oil supply
BBC
Gordon Brown has urged oil industry leaders to come up with ideas for improving supplies as fuel costs soar.

The government has announced moves to increase North Sea oil production, but Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks said they would have no impact on fuel prices.

Lorry drivers have staged protests against rising costs and Labour MPs have urged ministers to rethink increases in both petrol and road tax.

The PM, who met industry bosses, warned that high oil prices were here to stay.
(28 May 2008)

Gordon Brown doesn't get the oil crisis
David Strahan, UK Telegraph
Even by the low standards of his Government, Gordon Brown's recent pronouncements on oil have been surprising. Writing in a national newspaper on Wednesday, he argued that the price of a barrel had soared to $135 because of barriers to production that are "technical, financial and political".

There are problems here, sure enough, but the word he left out was "geological", and the omission is crucial. It means he really doesn't understand the profundity of the current crisis, and explains why panicky initiatives are bound to fail.

Brown and Darling can implore North Sea oil producers to pump harder, they can even finagle the tax regime to raise the incentives, but it will make very little difference. North Sea oil production peaked in 1999 at 2.9 million barrels per day and has now fallen by almost 60 per cent to around 1.2 million. This happened, as in all mature oil produci
(29 May 2008)
Also at Strahan's website.

U.K. Cuts Taxes on Oil Fields, Opens Areas to Development
Laurence Norman and James Herron, Wall Street Journal
The British government, pressed for solutions to soaring fuel prices, said it will exempt about 30 existing North Sea crude-oil and natural-gas fields from some taxes and approved the development of two new North Sea oil fields, which could begin production in early 2009.

But the measures, announced as U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling met with U.K. oil-industry executives to explore ways to increase oil and gas production, seemed unlikely to significantly alter Britain's fuel-price problems.

The British government, like others in Europe, has come under fire in recent weeks from groups that are severely affected by high fuel prices.
(29 May 2008)
Related:
Key facts on North Sea oil production

National Grid blamed for UK power cuts
Philippe Naughton , The Times
The National Grid was left carrying the can today for unprecedented power cuts that left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity around Britain yesterday.

The transmission network blamed the blackouts on a sudden loss of frequency caused by the near-simultaneous failure of the Sizewell B nuclear power station and the Longannet 1 coal-powered fire station in Fife, both of which "tripped" within a couple of minutes of each other at around 11.30am.

...The blackouts prompted warnings about the UK's "crumbling" energy infrastructure from McKinnon and Clarke, an independent energy consultancy, but the National Grid denied any systemic failures.

Stuart Larque, its spokesman, said: “We have a very robust system in the UK. It rarely fails and that’s why everybody is talking about it so much...It was just such a freak event."
(28 May 2008)

Fuel protest: lorry drivers flex their muscles
Fran Yeoman, UK Times
Hundreds of lorry drivers converged on London yesterday to protest at rising fuel costs. Police closed a section of the A40 - one of the capital’s main arteries - so that it could be used as a massive lorry park.

From there the drivers made their way to a rally at Marble Arch, where they told of jobs under threat, severe belt-tightening and family companies facing closure.

Early yesterday morning, as the convoys set off from Kent, Essex and all points north and west, they were greeted with spontaneous applause from motorists, who are also feeling the pinch with petrol prices rising to an average of about 114p a litre and diesel to 126p.
(28 May 2008)