Yet in hetworn these two pronoun cements of doom, on |l December Peter Wolker told Partiament: Deliver ies of crude oil to the UK last month were much as expected before the crisis. This month, oil companies expected a shortla! af about 15 per cent and reductions in imports of oil products."
How was it then, that despite the oil companies' own rationing schemes and the Government-imposed 10% cats, on stocks bad plunmeted to these "danger levels"? ""?
A report appearing in The Econoniet on 15 December deepens the mystery still further: An observer near Milford Haven the big oll tanker depot] said this week he had never seen so many super-tankers waiting to unload. The oll companies are using them as floating stores, just as they are paying some garage opera to keep their tanks full", At about the same time reports began to come from ailetarved Holland (whose dire predicament was supposed to explain some of our shortages) that all the refineries' oil storage tanke were full to the brim, and that private storage space was not to be The Ecosomis connnented "The oil-buying public, and this applies to Governments too, are in the oil firms hands. While the Arabs say that Britain's supplies are secure, the multinationals consider tbat they have the responsibility of running their own world system of ration ing, as the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell admitted last wook. It is also they who, apart from the Arabs themselves, have a monopoly independent source is the reports like Lloyd's by their agents at the terminals."
When it took a look at this independent information The Economist uncovered the astounding fact that tanker departures from the most important ou ports in the Arah Gulf in the first four days of December were up by 45% over the same period in 1972!
The Economist drew the inevitable conclusioo... it cannot be right that the public ahould be left so in the dark about what is happendesperate shortages wien much While the stranglebold of the oil monopolies over the oil industry makes it impossible to prove that Britain's oil crisis" was a deliberate ly engineered macocuvre, a tremendous amount of evidence points in thut direction. Moroover, the oil companies lad two important suns which were conveniently smootbed by the oil shortages. they wanted rapid concession of the price increases necessary to meet the extra cax payments to the oil producing countrics and to boost company profits. and they wanted Groverunent cooperation in speeding up and financing the development of the North Sen oil bonanza.
The Government was left with no choice. They did not even have the information neceseary to pot up an argument against the oil companies, much less the weapons to make thein toe the line. They simply folded up and met the demands of the monopolies-both on prices and North Sea oil development.
Next week we will look in more detail at North Sea oil and how to deal with the power of the ou