Having used his time in office to slap a supertax on the oil industry, Gordon Brown is now demanding massive state intervention to fend off the collapse of the North Sea drilling industry:
He is suggesting a number of measures that he said could help the industry, including;
- A North Sea reserve to maintain and upgrade essential infrastructure and to provide "last-resort" debt finance for companies who want to keep fields open.
- UK government co-investment through public-private partnerships.
- Government loans.
- And advance purchase agreements.
Mr Brown said: "In the most extreme cases, to avoid the field being mothballed in its entirety, the government could go into partnership for a take-over of the field.
"If it is temporarily abandoned, the government should act to ensure that sometime in the future it is possible to come back and exploit the oil.
To be fair, the situation has not been helped by low oil prices, but I think it's fair to say that the political establishment had pretty much done for the North Sea already. That, I suppose, needs to be added to the list of misdemeanours on several political epitaphs, including the particularly lengthy list of Mr Brown's.