Brexit and Divestiture Provides New Hope for “British” Gas

For a column on international energy, it is useful to give due credit to the role of British Gas (BG) in shaping the world's energy markets—both in gas and electricity, and both good and bad. Once the world's largest gas company outside of the Soviet Union, the sale of BG in 1986 by the government of Margaret Thatcher started a worldwide energy industry privatization trend that has probably made the world's utilities and other infrastructure businesses more efficient—both in responding to consumer demands and in the source and scale of financing and development.