Let Them Eat Crude - role of oil companies in United Kingdom oil price revolt - Brief Article

Ecologist, The, Nov, 2000

What on Earth was Britain's recent 'oil crisis' actually about? And what are the implications?

Ever wondered why the UK's oil price revolt came about so suddenly and... forcefully? Or why the timing of the 'crisis' was so convenient for some of those who gained from it, whilst inconveniencing everyone else?

It wasn't just prices. True, after an unreasonably low period - troughing around $10 a barrel - oil prices had been going up, but very slowly for the past six months or so. There was no sudden explosion in prices or availability of petrol at the pumps. So why the sudden outburst of truckers' and farmers' rage?

Well, winter is coming, as is the next budget - even a costly election - and the post-1997 political edifice is starting to show cracks. Warnings about high petrol prices have been piling on government desks for the last four months, yet politicians failed to act while life got progressively tougher for those who rely on petrol for a living. Yet earnings have been rising with prices, and there is no recession on the immediate horizon; so this is not an explanation in itself.

In fact, it's something else entirely. Take your eyes off the truckers at the refinery gates, and look instead inside those gates, at the big oil companies; there you will find the real spark that lit the flame.

In the UK, North Sea Oil operating profits have almost doubled during the last 10 years, yet tax on them has remained nonexistent. According to Greg Muttit of Corporate Watch, the UK's North Sea is the world's second-cheapest oil-producing region after Ireland. With only corporation tax to pay, companies in effect pay nothing for the oil they take away and sell around the world.

Thus it would seem natural for Chancellor Gordon Brown to consider options for raking back some of that 'corporate cream'. It was common knowledge in the oil industry that Brown was considering more burdensome taxes on oil corporations - taxes that would perhaps at least begin to reflect the real price of oil for society. Conveniently, then, blockades at refineries and depots were the best thing that could have happened to Esso, Shell, BP, Total-Fina and Texaco.

True, the companies didn't start the blockades. But consider this: if the refineries had been blockaded by environmentalists protesting about climate change, or union pickets protesting about wage levels, who could imagine a scene in which the country ground to a halt? Remember the Wapping disputes and miners' strike of the 80s, or the road protests of the 90s; such protesters would be cleared and carted off to cells by any means necessary. Somehow, though, a handful of angry lorry drivers scared the big oil companies so much that they refused to let the drivers that they use work; even in the face of direct pleas from the prime minister? Come off it.

The reality, then, is that a series of minor protests at refineries here in the UK served as an excuse for oil companies to hold back the drivers, create public panic and send a forceful warning to New Labour about taxing their absurd profits in the next budget.

Unless public transport is improved and fares cut with revenues used for the transition into a fuel-free economy, oil companies will continue to grow in size and power; and to use that power as blatantly as they did in September.