Now we've got to teach people about exports, do we?

The latest complaint about the North Sea:

Up to half of the oil produced in the North Sea will be incompatible with UK refineries by 2035, campaigners have warned.

Britain’s refineries are geared up to handle what is known as light oil, rather than heavy crude.

Around 25pc of domestically produced crude oil is already classed as heavy, with this proportion expected to rise to as much as 50pc in the next decade, according to an analysis by Global Witness.

It means Britain will be forced to ship an ever growing proportion of oil from the North Sea abroad unless new refineries are built.

Alice Harrison, of Global Witness, said: “Rishi Sunak’s obsession with oil is a red herring.

“The UK can’t process the oil we produce, and fresh analysis today shows the situation is only getting worse.”

Taking something produced in Britain and sending it abroad to be consumed by foreigners is known as an “export”. We generally tend to think they’re an interesting idea. With that lovely foreign money we get from these “exports” it is possible to buy things made by foreigners that we ourselves get to consume. These are known as “imports”. The whole process, swapping - intermediated by that money stuff - of swapping exports for imports is known as “trade”.

It’s the way the world gets rich, David Ricardo as well as Adam Smith wrote about it extensively some two and more centuries back. It comes as something of a shock that it’s necessary to educate “Global Witness” on such simplicities. But some are a little more simple about reality than they think they are, obviously.

We’d also add one more little detail. Currently the government gains 75% of those profits from that process of producing oil in the North Sea. True, we think that percentage is a little high but we also insist that resource rents should be taxed until the pips squeak. Still, we’re really not sure why Global Witness is so against money flowing into the Treasury. Are they against it being used to buy nice things for British voters?