There has been a large move over the last few years in the UK of "not in my backyard" when it comes to both refining capacity, and heavy industry in general.
The north sea has stacks of reserves, but instead of getting both the brent and natural gas out of the seabed, canning it, and selling it as product, we instead have wound down NG and reduced refineries over the past 20 years.
There used to be a HUGE refinery 10 miles from where I live at Grain, run by BP which was closed down. Now it is used as a storage facility for imported distillates. Doh!
Buncefield, another "routing" facility had a huge fire 6 years ago due to lax safety standards.
No one wants smelly old industry on their doorstep anymore, so as a result we have more unemployment and higher cost of living prices. Politicians are more worried about being re-elected short term than screwing us all over long term.
Nowdays, we are slaves to imported Natural Gas from Russia, Electricity from France, Distribution from Germany, and of course we're (at least the politicians) are also talking about devolving Scotland where most of the UK's oil reserves are!
Double DOH!
All politics.
In the long term, we might be all dead, but in the medium term, I'm fed up with being pressured to Emigrate by the BS that one has to put up with in this country all the time.