This article examines the implications for the future of the. UK onshore economy of the development and exploitation of oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, expanding the analysis in the Governor's Ashridge Lecture of November 1980.
Part I discusses the size of the reserves and the cost of their exploitation. It presents estimates of real flows for the last decade, during which the UK has become roughly self-sufficient in oil, and illustrative projections to the mid-1980s, when the UK will probably be a net oil exporter.
North Sea oil and gas - costs and benefits