> paying huge amounts of carbon to import from the Middle East is a good idea

You are wrong here.

UK oil has a very high carbon footprint.

British North Sea oil is sour (high in sulphur). It is the "wrong" type of oil for UK refineries. So it gets sent to other countries around the world for refining.

UK oil is viscous, waxy, crude which needs to be heated to pipe it. This means it takes a lot of energy to pipe (hello carbon footprint !) and it is not compatible with UK refineries anyway, so it has to be moved overseas (hello carbon footprint !!).

UK crude is nothing like Norwegian crude and massively different from the stuff drilled in the Middle East which requires barely any refining in comparison.

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hardlianotion a day ago | parent | next [-]

Brent crude is a light, sweet oil. UK oil is extracted from same oilfields as Norways - little difference in quality - and the major extraction from both is Brent crude

A handy explainer on Brent quality is here: https://kimray.com/training/types-crude-oil-heavy-vs-light-s...

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traceroute66 a day ago | parent [-]

> Brent crude is a light, sweet oil.

Brent is yesterday's story....

All the oil that would come from the prospective fields if extra drilling were to be permitted would absolutely be the heavy, viscous, waxy stuff.

	▲	hardlianotion a day ago \| parent [-]
		I am going to have to ask you for a source this time.

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Gud a day ago | parent | prev [-]

So why not refine it in the UK?

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traceroute66 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> So why not refine it in the UK?

I already gave the answer in my original post.... UK crude is the wrong type of oil for UK refineries.

Almost all UK refineries were built back in the day (late 60's/early 70's), before North Sea, when the UK was mostly importing oil from Libya and elsewhere in that region.

All the stuff from Libya and elsewhere is far removed from the viscous, waxy sludge that emerges from the North Sea. It requires a far less intensive refining process.

So if your refinery has been built for a low-intensity process you can't just bolt on the shit-ton of high-energy stuff required for waxy crude.

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skippyboxedhero a day ago | parent | next [-]

It isn't the wrong type of crude. Forties pipeline was directly connected to a refinery. That refinery is now shutting down because of high energy costs, high general costs of doing business, and the investment outlook for UK North Sea.

The solution even if this wasn't true is also simple: build more refineries. This is all within our control.

You also said above it takes "energy" to pipe...do you have no understanding of physics? How do you think stuff moves in a pipe. Dear God.

You also said above that Norwegian crude is different...it is not. Brent is a crude blend that includes UK and Norwegian crudes. The chemical differences are relatively small, Norwegian refineries import UK crude (I am using UK crude because, for some reason, you seem to think that is something exists in the real world...it is just Brent).

One of the most confidently wrong posts I have seen on here...and that is after you said that an offshore gas field was given over to real estate development. Lol.

You should consider a career in the Civil Service. You will fit in well.

	▲	youngtaff 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Grangemouth has been precarious for years and has received tens of millions in public subsidies High electricity prices aren’t really a thing for oil refineries as they’re capable of generating their own as Valero Pembroke does

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gambiting a day ago | parent | prev [-]

That begs the question why aren't we building refineries that can process our own oil without having to ship it abroad for processing.

	▲	traceroute66 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> That begs the question why aren't we building refineries that can process our own oil Putting aside the legal and "public appetite" aspects that someone else already mentioned, it all comes back to privitisation in the end. Given that the extraction was privitised, clearly market theory dictates that you cannot then interfere with where the extracted oil goes. So if a private company is deciding on refining then it will follow the path of most profit, i.e. build/expand vs use existing capacity elsewhere. Given that most oil companies are large multinationals they will likely also prioritise using their own facilities vs paying a third-party refinery. And clearly at the time, carbon footprint was not on the agenda of the private companies, either directly or enforced via legislation.
	▲	WarmWash a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The writing is on the wall that people, especially young people, don't want to be using fossil fuels anymore. Refineries are expensive (like $10B for country scale) and take years to build. Which begs the question, how much renewable energy can you get for $10B? And perhaps even faster? But it's not that clear, because reality has these fractal trade offs and the future is typically pretty opaque. So then will/motivation because an issue too.
	▲	lotsofpulp a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Most likely the legal and public relations costs of building it are predicted to be more than shipping it somewhere else and back.

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dmix a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I ask the same question about why Canada sends most of it's oil to the US to be refined. The answer is usually the government doesn't allow it and/or no one wants to take a private capital risk in the economic environment.