The British oil industry

One of the areas where British industry has been very successful in the years since the Second World War is oil. BP (British Petroleum) is one of the Seven Sisters, the seven great international companies which dominate the oil market. Shell, which is partly British owned, is another. BP's interests include oil exploration, drilling for oil, refining, petrochemicals, and selling petrol to the motorist in many countries of the world. BP is partly owned by the Government, although it is present Conservative policy to sell it back to private industry. The discovery and exploitation of our own oil supplies in the North Sea has however been the great success story in the British oil industry during the last ten years. Britain is now the world's fifth largest oil producer, and, as well as being self-sufficient in oil we now export large quantities of it. Britain, for example, is France's second largest supplier after Saudi Arabia. Some people argue that without oil the British economy would be in poor shape indeed.

Brian Harrison: Britain observed. 1945 to the present day; Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1984, page 60