Priming the Pump

The black gold at the end of Britain's rainbow began flowing ashore from the North Sea for the first time last week. The victory over wind, sleet, 100-ft. waves and British muddle came on the 160th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, and it sent Energy Secretary Anthony Wedgwood Benn into a fit of hyperbole as he opened the first valve on the Isle of Grain. Benn held aloft a souvenir bottle of the crude and announced to an assembly that included U.S. Ambassador Elliot Richardson: "This is much more significant and historic than the moon shot, which only brought back soil and rock."

In one way, Benn's analogy was not altogether farfetched. The technology of North Sea production is indeed impressive. But the prospective financial benefits are hardly enough to send Britons into orbit. The nation last year suffered a $9 billion payments deficit; production from the small Argyll field off the east coast of Scotland--the first tapped--will lighten that load by only $140 million annually. The Argyll field and three others to be opened this year will supply a bare 2% of Britain's oil needs.

Hopes are that by 1981 North Sea production will make Britain self-sufficient and by 1990 the nation will be one of the world's top seven oil producers. Trouble is, the country has already in effect mortgaged much of its eventual oil income by borrowing abroad to maintain today's living standards. A big slice of the oil money will be swallowed by repayment of foreign borrowings, which last year equaled a startling 5% of Britain's gross national product.

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