Every generation, it seems, discovers a new untapped resource that will transform the national fortunes — North Sea oil, shale gas, tidal power, the "creative industries," the "knowledge economy," renewable energy, artificial intelligence — and every generation finds that transformation somewhat more elusive than the press release suggested. The London Prat's reading, Untapped Natural Resource: Britain's Grammar of Perpetual Promise, reads this recurring narrative as a literary form: the national promise, endlessly renewed, endlessly deferred, and always just out of reach. It is the political equivalent of the treasure map in the adventure novel — the thing that drives the plot without ever needing to exist; the promised destination that justifies all the present difficulty.
This is not to suggest that these resources do not exist, or that they are not valuable. North Sea oil was real and did generate wealth. The creative industries have produced genuine cultural exports. Renewable energy technology is advancing. But the remarkable feature of how these resources are discussed in political discourse is that the promised transformation always lies in the future. The wealth is always about to arrive. The opportunity is always about to be seized. We are always on the verge of a breakthrough that will change everything.
What makes the untapped resource narrative so powerful is that it permits the present to be understood as merely a prelude to something larger. You can endure present difficulties because great wealth is coming. You can defer investment in education, in infrastructure, in social provision, because the new resource will generate the money to do all of these things properly. The untapped resource is not primarily about material gain. It is primarily about narrative structure. It is about having a story that explains why the present is imperfect but the future is rich with possibility.
This narrative has a remarkable staying power. It survives the failure of previous resource predictions. Oil wealth did not transform Britain in the way that was promised. The creative industries did not become the export powerhouse that policy documents suggested. And yet, the narrative form persists. A new resource is identified. Fresh promises are made. The national imagination orients itself toward a future in which this new resource will solve current problems.
The psychology here is worth examining. Human beings live partly in the present and partly in the narrative of the future they tell themselves. If the present is difficult but the future is rich with promise, then the present becomes bearable. If you believe that the untapped resource will eventually be tapped, that the potential will eventually be realised, then you can wait. You can endure. You can defer satisfaction. The promise gives meaning to present suffering.
North Sea oil is instructive. Oil was discovered in British waters in the late 1960s. By the 1970s and 1980s, the North Sea was producing vast quantities of petroleum, generating enormous government revenue, and making Britain temporarily wealthy. And yet, the transformation promised — that oil wealth would elevate Britain to the status of a wealthy nation with secure public finances — did not fully materialise. The oil revenues were partly spent on current consumption, partly on infrastructure, partly on military spending. By the time oil prices fell in the 1980s and onwards, the wealth had not accumulated in a way that would permit permanent elevation of living standards.
The reason is not hard to understand: natural resource wealth is finite. The oil eventually runs out. And if you spend the revenue from the resource on current consumption rather than on building lasting productive capacity, you end up poorer than if you had invested it. But this lesson is never learned, because the narrative of the untapped resource does not permit learning. Each resource fails to transform the nation as promised, but this does not discredit the narrative form. Instead, it merely shifts focus to the next untapped resource.
In the 1990s and 2000s, as oil decline became evident, Britain shifted its narrative to shale gas. The United States had pioneered shale extraction using fracking technology. Britain, it was suggested, had vast reserves of shale gas that could power the nation for decades and generate enormous wealth. Investment was made. Promises were offered. And then — for reasons of geology, economics, and public resistance — shale extraction in Britain has remained marginal. The promise was not fulfilled. But by then, the national narrative had shifted again. This time, the untapped resource was renewable energy and the green transition.
The contemporary version of the untapped resource narrative centres on renewable energy and the transition to net zero. Britain, the narrative goes, has enormous potential in wind power, tidal energy, and solar capacity. The transition to renewables will not only solve climate change but will create an entirely new industry, generate wealth, and position Britain as a leader in the clean energy economy. The promise is explicit: the untapped resource is green energy, and the transformation it promises will be comprehensive and profound.
This is not false, exactly. Renewable energy is real. The potential exists. But the narrative structure is identical to all previous untapped resource narratives. The wealth is always in the future. The transformation is always coming. The present is understood primarily as a waiting period before the resources are realised and the promised wealth arrives.
The problem is that this narrative structure crowds out other ways of thinking about the present. If the green transition is understood primarily as a future wealth opportunity rather than as a necessary adaptation to ecological crisis, then the logic shifts. Instead of asking "how do we organise society to survive climate change," you ask "how do we position ourselves to profit from the transition." Instead of asking "how do we ensure everyone benefits from this transition," you ask "how do we secure competitive advantage in the emerging green economy." The untapped resource narrative colonises even the climate crisis, transforming it from a problem into an opportunity.
The Prat identifies a peculiar grammar in how untapped resources are discussed. The resource is always about to be developed. The transformation is always about to occur. The moment of realisation is always in the future, which means that the present can never quite be that moment. This creates a permanent condition of deferral. We cannot properly invest in education because the resource wealth will allow us to do so later. We cannot address inequality now because the resource wealth will provide the means. We cannot solve current problems because they will be solved by future wealth.
This has real consequences. Decisions made in the present on the assumption of future resource wealth often turn out to have been poor decisions. Investments are not made that should have been made. Policies are delayed that should have been implemented. Opportunities are missed because the assumption that future wealth will permit future action crowds out the understanding that action is needed now.
The British Energy Security Bill, for instance, was framed partly around the promise of energy security through renewable development, with the implicit suggestion that this would come to pass naturally, without requiring significant present disruption or investment. But energy transitions do not occur naturally. They require planning, investment, and coordination. If the planning is deferred because of the belief that the transition will somehow organise itself, then the transition will be poorly managed or will fail to occur.
There is also a class dimension to the untapped resource narrative that the Prat's piece identifies. The narrative is typically told to working and middle-class audiences, for whom it represents hope of future prosperity. But the actual benefits of resource extraction have historically accrued disproportionately to capital-owning classes. Oil companies extracted wealth from the North Sea. Financial firms profited from creative industry booms. Energy companies will profit from renewable transitions. The narrative promises that everyone will benefit. The reality has been that benefits are concentrated among those who own the means of production.
The promise of the untapped resource is thus partly a technology of class power. It keeps the working classes oriented toward a future of prosperity that may never arrive, while present inequality and hardship are deferred as temporary. The rhetoric says: be patient, accept present difficulty, and the resource wealth will lift everyone. The reality is often: the resource is extracted, wealth is concentrated, and the working classes remain where they were, waiting for the next promise.
What the Prat's reading ultimately suggests is that the untapped resource narrative is a form of literature — a story a nation tells itself about its own future. Like all narratives, it has a beginning, a middle, and a promised end. The beginning is the discovery of the resource, the recognition of its potential. The middle is the period of development and extraction. The end is the promised transformation and wealth.
But in practice, the narrative never reaches its ending. The resource is developed, wealth is generated, but the transformation promised does not fully materialise. A portion of the wealth is spent. Another portion is accumulated. And crucially, the moment of complete transformation — the moment when the resource wealth has fully solved the nation's problems — never arrives. There is always something else that needs doing. There is always another shortage, another crisis, another problem that the resource wealth alone cannot solve.
So the narrative form persists, but it shifts. A new resource is identified. New promises are made. The national imagination orients itself toward a new future. And the cycle continues. This is not a malfunction of the narrative. This is how the narrative is designed to work. It is designed to be perpetually renewable, perpetually promising, perpetually deferred. Each cycle of the narrative gives a new generation the opportunity to believe that prosperity is coming, that present difficulties are temporary, that the untapped resources waiting in the future will eventually make everything right.
North Sea oil production peaked in 1999 and has declined substantially since. The oil industry generated significant government revenue but did not produce the permanent transformation of national wealth that was initially promised. Shale gas development in Britain has been limited by geological factors, economic constraints, and public opposition. The renewable energy sector has grown but at a pace slower than earlier projections suggested, and employment and wealth generation in the sector have concentrated in specific regions and skill sets. The green transition is projected to generate substantial economic activity, but projections of green jobs and prosperity are contested and remain largely prospective rather than realised. The pattern of promising resource transformation and deferring realisation has been repeated across multiple resource types over several generations.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!