Oil be damned

Published on 15/01/2013 00:00

There is still no explanation from the SNP regarding future funding of universal benefits. All we hear is that Scotland has vast reserves of North Sea oil and we will create an oil wealth fund similar to Norway.

The problem with this is that you can’t save it and spend it at the same time, so while they are salting it away in the oil wealth fund, what are they going to use to pay their way?

An International Energy Agency report states that North Sea oil and gas production has fallen by 45 per cent in the past decade, faster than anywhere else in the developed world, making Britain a net importer of oil for the first time in decades.

Production is forecast to fall to one third of its 1990s peak by 2020. By this time it is projected that the USA will have opened large new finds, making it 
virtually self-sufficient in oil and taking it out of the market and so reducing the wider market demand for oil.

The result is expected to be a reduction in the price per barrel from $100 to $70 by 2020.

In addition, according to a study into the maritime boundaries between England and 
Scotland, the land boundary heads north-east pointing towards Bergen in Norway and not towards Denmark as envisaged by many.

Under this scenario the report suggests that a large proportion of the North Sea oilfields would belong to England and not 
Scotland.

It is a Nationalist trait to 
eschew facts in favour of emotional, uncosted hyperbolic 
assertions, but surely even the most ardent separatist would agree that to base the country’s economic policy and future on volatile and dwindling assets is madness.

Donald Lewis

Gifford

East Lothian