No 'oil crisis for Britain
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by Gibb Grace
• Several leading oil companies have told me Britain is safe from any shortage of diesel fuel such as is occurring in the USA.
A Shell-Mex and BP spokesman said that the fuel needs of America, the world's biggest consumer of oil, were still growing at a fast rate. For some years now the USA has been having to buy oil from abroad. There was no shortage of raw oil products, but a bottleneck had occurred in refining, which had in turn led to a shortage of certain fuels.
However, in Britain refining capacity is more than keeping pace with demands. The general consensus of opinion among oil companies in Britain is that known oil deposits are sufficient to supply world demand until the year 2000 at least and that future finds would extend this date considerably.
World crude-oil prices have been remarkably stable over the past 10 years and most rises in refined fuel have been caused by taxes. The price of crude oil will inevitably increase as extraction becomes more difficult, and thus more expensive -but not alarmingly so.