Over the last decade the primary fuel base of the British economy has been substantially widened. To the country's traditional and indigenous energy mainstay, coal, and its first modern partner, oil, has been added the power of the atom and of natural gas. In the process, and not withstanding the new-found hydrocarbon resources under the North Sea, the emotional reluctance of a time-honoured energy exporter for the first time to become dependent upon substantial energy imports has been to a large extent overcome. Meanwhile, the producer–supplier industries operating in the British energy market have steadily improved the efficiency of their production, processing, transport and distribution systems and have there-by come to enjoy falling real costs albeit in varying degrees. The market, as a consequence, has progressively developed a more competitive quality.

Setting the pace in these developments has been the oil industry. Taking advantage of the international industry's widening resource base – especially the development of low cost fields in North and West Africa – and the global persistence of excess production capacity relative to existing demands (Adelman, 1964 a, 1964b), it has been able to procure its crude-oil supplies in a market which has been characterised by a downward pressure upon field prices. Despite the rise in the general price level, the 1970 price for Persian Gulf crude oil f.o.b. stood at about one-third of what it was twenty-five years earlier.