The Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act 1982 (1982 chapter 23) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which started the process of privatisation of the oil and gas industries in the UK. It empowered the government to float off and sell shares in Britoil the upstream production side of the British National Oil Corporation. It ended the British Gas Corporation’s monopoly on the transportation and supply of gas, opening up the gas market to other gas suppliers. The Act made miscellaneous provisions relating to the oil and gas industries concerning Petroleum Licences and Offshore Installations. Background The British gas industry had been in state ownership since nationalisation of the industry in 1949. The Gas Act 1972 had established the British Gas Corporation to exercise full responsibility for the oversight, control and operation of the gas industry. The government had established the British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) in 1975 under the provision of the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Act 1975. BNOC had the power to search for and produce petroleum in underground strata in any part of the world; to move, store and treat petroleum and anything derived from it; and to buy, sell and otherwise deal in petroleum and anything derived from it. As constituted BNOC was effectively two businesses: firstly for the production of oil, and secondly the trading in oil. In the early 1980s Margaret Thatcher’s government saw a need to reduce the perceived inefficient state control of the energy sector, and to introduce a market-oriented system through privatization. As the Secretary of State for Energy, Nigel Lawson, said in Parliament at the Second Reading of the Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Bill ‘the proper business of Government is not the government of business... no industrial corporation should be owned and controlled by the State unless there is a positive and specific reason for such an arrangement.’ The Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act enabled the Government to float off and sell shares in the upstream oil-producing business of BNOC and establish a new structure for the trading business of BNOC. It provided new powers for the disposal of assets held by the British Gas Corporation, and ended the corporation's monopoly on the transportation and supply of gas. The Act included miscellaneous provisions for oil and gas industry including the granting of Petroleum Licences, and to the Safety Zones of Offshore Installation partly in response to Alexander