linguistic:paraphrasing
Impact on United Kingdom

The North Sea oil fields, which were discovered in 1969, did not start to be exploited until 1975, making the United Kingdom entirely dependent upon imported oil in 1973. The way that world oil prices quadrupled in late 1973 had a very adverse impact on the British economy,. In a series of speeches in December 1973, the Prime Minister Edward Heath warned that because of the "oil shock" that the British economy was going into recession and the British people should expect economic austerity. The need to avoid importing the now more expensive oil to help manage the balance-of-payments led the Heath government to turn towards coal (which Britain was self-sufficient in) as a substitute source of energy, which gave the coal miners union immense leverage over the government to press for higher wages for the coal miners. Heath offered the coal miners a 7% wage increase, which was rejected as insufficient by the miners who went on strike. Through not subjected to the embargo, the UK nonetheless faced an energy crisis of its own—a series of strikes by coal miners and railroad workers over the winter of 1973–74 became a major factor in the defeat of Heath's Conservative government in February 1974 general elections. The new Labour government told the British to heat only one room in their houses over the winter. The Labour government of Harold Wilson settled the strike by giving the coal miners a 35% pay increase.