This was supposed to save an old imperial nation that had run out of empire. It was supposed to pay for our re-industrialisation and economic modernisation as I recall. It was going to help us avoid any messy entanglements with unpredictable Middle Eastern politics, in line with the abandonment of the East of Suez foreign policy.
Yeah, perhaps you're right, we must have been a bit simple to believe that, mustn't we? (The bit about no more Middle Eastern entanglements seems a real rib tickler in retrospect).
It's not run out yet - there's the usual teckkie argument about how cheaply what's left can be retrieved though (aka 'the Peak Oil debate'). But what has happened as the graph above so graphically shows is that it is getting less and less adequate to meet domestic needs. & the window it gave Britain to modernise and re-industrialise is closing, perhaps never to return.
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