Oil is Britain’s thin red line against a hard Brexit. The North Sea provided an economic buffer during the “winter of discontent” of 1978 and the “Black Monday” stock market crash, which almost destroyed the City a decade later. It may have to serve the same defensive purpose again if Theresa May, the Prime Minister, bungles a deal to leave Europe, or even worse, fails to reach an agreement.

Often derided as an insignificant and declining industry by some economists, oil remains one of the country’s most reliable money spinners and sources of hard foreign currency export revenues. Think of what the UK would be like without the vast wealth generated by the equivalent of 44bn barrels of oil pumped from British territory over the last 40 years. The North Sea also makes Britain entirely unique within the European Union, which is otherwise mostly barren of “black gold”.

Without the near 1.7m barrels per day of oil equivalent – a measure including gas and other liquids – pumped from the UK continental shelf, the 27 nation bloc is entirely dependent on producers outside of its control such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. Of course, Norway, which sits outside the EU but still enjoys trade access, remains a trusted oil and gas ally for Brussels. Nevertheless, Britain’s exit will to a certain extent weaken the European project in terms of the world’s most valuable traded energy commodity.