Biggest UK Oil Refinery goes into administration!

I have often said that this country could not organise a drink up in a Brewery and today proved that when we hear on the news that the Coryton Oil Refinery in Essex, a plant that creates around 10% of the UK's fuel and processing 220,000 barrels of crude oil, per day, could go into liquidation.

Rumours are that they supply London with about 20% of it’s oil needs but faces the chance of closure now with 1000 job loses and threatening to cause the price of oil to raise through the roof, all at time when Oil prices are beating all time records.

What on earth went wrong with a company providing that much fuel? Potentially their financers froze their credit facility, but the fact that a company of such size and such importance turnover could potentially fold, proves the extent and how living on the edge the entire economy has become!

Now our own Governments are urging people not to “Panic Buy” petrol and assure us that there is plenty to go around! I am just glad I do not have a car anymore. For you hear a plea like that and suddenly I feel like a 4 year old whose own mother is telling me “Don’t touch that”. The second she turns her back you know you are going to touch it! Likewise, the great British Public will dash out this evening or first thing tomorrow to fill their tanks.

All this comes on the same day as the news informs us our Government’s borrowing up to today peaked at an all time high of over 1 Trillion GBP. I believe by my calculations that 1,000,000,000,000! Heck of a lot of money

Maybe I somewhat contributed to the refinery’s bankruptcy, after all, I sold my car!

We also, last week, heard that the Government has approved a high speed rail link between Birmingham and London, despite there is already a regular speed line going there, meanwhile our cities airports are chocking in congestion. Heathrow is apparently running at 99.8% capacity and yet the new runway at Heathrow was blocked. Which all the powers that be are ageing that this single decision is holding back UK PLC! We need to growth and income that tourism brings and other countries have seen the irony of ever increasing Air Tax. The Netherlands for example scrapped it entirely knowing it helped bring more tourists to their homelands. Meanwhile we seem to sit here and fester while desperately needing growth.

As we approach the next Mayoral elections in this great city it seems that current Mayor, Boris Johnson is trailing former Mayor, Ken Livingston, has lost 8 points in the poles and Ken is possibly going to win all because of his pledge to lower Tube and Bus fares, something Boris has increased year on year .

Things will get better, I am sure of that, but it does feel that no one can win right now. For a company supplying 10 % of the whole countries oil can fold, so can anyone. So in the interim, I guess I will pay off bills, build my savings and be grateful for the blessings we do receive. ’