A deeper hole

摘要

BRITAIN'S offshore oil industry has few friends, so the chancellor, George Osborne, may have thought he was safe to hit it with an extra £1.8 billion ($2.9 billion) of taxes in his budget in March so he could afford to appease motorists with a cut in fuel duties. Unmoved by the industry's howls of protest, Mr Osborne maintains that the extra taxes will not have much effect on production. But at a meeting on May 23rd with Alex Salmond, Scotland's nationalist first minister, he discovered that the industry now has a formidable political ally.