I’M delighted to see that from Monday Professor Alex Russell will be writing a series in The National on the incompetent and arguably corrupt mismanagement of our North Sea oil and gas by successive UK Governments (Major series on Westminster’s mismanagement of North Sea oil all next week in The National, October 20).
The facts and figures regarding the UK petroleum revenue tax structure have been in the public domain for some time, and although they make damning reading for oil economists, they make little sense to the ordinary person in the street. This was a fundamental failing of the previous Independence campaign in my opinion. Yes spokespeople, SNP in particular, lacked the basic knowledge of this key industry, and what little they did know, they had great difficulty putting across to the ordinary person in the street. The SNP practically gifted this key issue to Better Together by allowing the “neutral” and laughably “expert” opinions from Aberdeen billionaire Ian Wood to go unchallenged, Wood freely damned the North Sea oil industry to be in terminal decline during the decisive last week of the indy campaign, which Better Together immediately capitalized on with it’s mouthpiece BBC and the London media blanket. The economic outlook for an independent Scotland was dire and ordinary Scots were once again feart! (care for another knighthood Sir Ian?)
Meanwhile, we in the industry openly knew of the massive BP Clair prospect lying west of Shetland in late 2012. The “neutral and expert” Wood was seemingly unaware of this vast field with its high quality, easily extractable condensate yielding an initial field life of at least 40 years during his neutral broadcast? Since then, even bigger fields have been discovered, most notably the Lancaster field, also west of Shetland, and the most recent enormous find in the outer Moray Firth. Sound like an industry in decline? A fatal and foolishly naive mistake for the Yes campaign to allow Wood or others like him any credence and the cost to the Yes cause was immeasurable, probably fatal at that crucial point in the campaign when Yes looked like it could win, and the SNP simply had no answer!
I have worked in oil and gas exploration for 29 years. I have been employed for the last 24 years by a Norwegian firm operating in Norway. It pains me to see how my own country has fared from a miraculous windfall which should have changed Scotland, like it did Norway forever. Instead, Scotland is shackled to a toxic Union that has squandered everything and is arrogantly dragging the entire country on to imminent economic and social disaster.
I frustratingly find that ordinary Scots are under the blind impression that the UK owns and sells its oil and gas to the global market, just like Norway does. This is simply not the case I’m afraid. The election of Thatcher in 1979 saw Britoil swiftly sold off to the private sector in 1982. By 1986 all of Britoil assets were owned entirely by the multinational BP. Thatcher’s unbounded wisdom also saw fit to gift the actual oil and gas itself lying under Scottish waters to the foreign oil companies in return that they only pay revenue tax on the profits they make to the UK Treasury.
Should we really be shocked to find that in 2014, Norway’s oil and gas revenues were triple that of the UK since production began, even though Norway had produced over a billion barrels fewer in the same period (40 billion barrels). It is not too late for Scotland to save itself from ruin and change economically and socially forever but only through independence can this cartel be broken and real change be achieved.
Graeme Goodall
Buckie
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