and still produces most of the UK’s oil
Thanks to English investment and English companies based in London bringing it to the surface.
Without England, Scotland would never have had access to "its" oil.
That's not true. Practically all of the gas in the UK is in the southern North Sea - English waters. It's England's gas, and we have trillions of cubic feet more of it under English soil which the government is desperate to frack.
When the SNP say silly things like "95% of the UK's North Sea oil is in Scottish waters" they also include North Sea gas to inflate their figure, even though almost all of the UK's North Sea gas is in English waters. It's disgraceful.
The truth about UK oil and gas
Posted on May 14, 2011 by Robert Henderson
The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) bases its case for the viability of Scotland’s independence on the idea that wicked England has been “stealin’ ouir oil” and that if only they had control of the tax revenues from UK oil and gas Scotland would become a Caledonian El Doraldo.
Sadly for such people a 2009 Scotland Office paper “Scotland and Oil” dealing with the tax income from oil and gas fields around the UK painted a rather different picture. It concluded that:
“• If all North Sea oil revenues had been allocated to Scotland there would only have been 9 years out of the last 27 when Scotland’s finances would have been in surplus.
• Including all North Sea oil revenues the last year of surplus was in 1988-89 and since then there has been 18 years of annual deficits with Scotland’s spending being greater than the tax raised in Scotland.
• Even if all oil revenues had been allocated to Scotland the total deficit would have outweighed the total surplus by £20bn since 1980-81. “ (see page 1 – all references below to pages without a url refer to this url – http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/scotlandoffice/files/Scotland%20and%20Oil%20-%20Background%20paper.pdf)
So there you have it, the official view is that even if all the oil and gas revenues were allocated to Scotland they still would not pay their way. Of course, a substantial part
of the oil and gas tax revenue would not go to Scotland because of the fields in
English waters. Exactly how much is debatable, but most of the remaining gas
is in English waters, viz:
“The SNP claims that Scotland would receive 95 per cent of oil revenue, but its calculation is based on the total revenue from oil and gas. Its opponents say that they do not take into account the large number of gas fields in English waters.
“THE EXPERT SAYS: Prof Haszeldine says: “The vast majority of the oil is in Scottish waters. With practically all of the gas in the UK in the southern North Sea, that is in ‘English’ territory.” He says it is hard to separate the revenue from oil and gas. “(Can oil and gas fuel an independent Scotland's economy? - The Scotsman)
There is also the intriguing prospect of the outer Islands, the Orkneys and Shetlands, not wanting to leave the UK or seeking independence (many of the people of those island don't even consider themselves to be Scots). So, if Scotland leave the UK, those islands could leave Scotland and remain in the UK, probably becoming part of England. That would take more oil and gas revenue out of Scottish hands.
The fact that even the total oil and gas tax revenues did not bridge the gap between what Scotland received in money from the Treasury and what she contributed to the Treasury is unsurprising. The price of oil is high now but this is an abnormal. In the period 1980-2003, the price was always below $20 a barrel apart for two years in the mid 1990s when it was a couple of dollars a barrel higher. (see page 3 “Scotland and Oil”) . The price did not rise above $50 dollars a barrel until 2007.
There has also been great volatility in the tax take in recent years:
“In July last year [2008-9] sitting with the price of oil breaking new highs at $147 a barrel and projected revenues for the current year [2008-09] at £13.2bn, finances were looking incredibly good. However, sitting today with oil prices at $70 per barrel and projected revenues for the current year [2009-10] of £6.9bn the finances would be looking substantially different and spending plans would have had to have changed.” (see page 10 “Scotland and Oil”).
At present the Scottish Parliament is in a very fortunate situation. It knows, more or less, what revenue it will have to spend for the coming financial year because its funding comes from the UK Treasury. Thus it is spared the responsibility of raising money from its electors . It is in the same position as, for example, the BBC.
If Scotland were independent it would have to raise the money to be spent by central government. That would bring a very different relationship between the politicians
and the Scottish electorate. If a very large slice of Scottish government revenue was dependent on oil and gas revenues , massively swings in the tax collected from year to year, as happened in the years 2008/9 and 2009/10 , it would make forward planning very difficult indeed. To understand just how volatile tax revenue from oil and gas has been since production began see Internet Memory | UK Government Web Archive.
No electorate is going to be cheering if politicians are constantly having to change spending plans. The worse case scenario would be that the oil and gas revenues would be so low that a Scottish government would simply not be able to fund the ordinary business of government. That is not so far-fetched because of the great difference between revenue and expenditure when oil and gas revenue is ignored. For 2007/8 the Scotland Office estimated that without including any revenue from oil and tax, Scotland paid £45,191 billion into the UK exchequer and received £56,285 billion back, a deficit of £11, 094 billion.
(http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/sc...ent Expenditures and Revenues in Scotland.pdf).
Apart from the volatility of the oil and gas price, there is also the rapidly depleting reserves of oil and gas around the UK. Production has already fallen from just under 3 million barrels a day in 1999 to about 1,25 million barrels in 2014. ( see page 5 “Scotland and Oil”). The amount of oil and gas will continue to fall over the medium term and the quantuity oil and gas extracted will be strongly influenced by the oil and gas price. The
lower it is, the less exploitation of the smaller marginal fields. In the medium term Scotland can look forward to diminishing tax returns whatever happens.
There is a further fly in the Caledonian water. As the price of oil and gas has risen and the
political volatility of many of the major oil and gas producers has increased, increased interest has been shown in extracting gas and oil from shales. Most of the likely sites in the UK are in England or English waters. British Geological Survey Website - Page not found.
If this source of hydrocarbons proves to be as abundant as its advocates claim, the demand for oil and gas from the ever more marginal fields around the UK will diminish.
There are many other economic dragons which an independent Scotland would need to slay, including dealing with their over-reliance on taxpayer funded jobs and how they would fund their share of the UK’s public financial obligations at the point of independence, but the volatility and shrinking of the UK’s oil and gas tax receipts would be arguably their greatest challenge simply because of the heavy dependence the advocates of independence have placed upon their continuation at a high rate.
https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/the-truth-about-uk-oil-and-gas/
“Yesterday was V-E Day, when the United Kingdom was celebrating its finest hour. Seventy years later, it could be contemplating the beginning of its end in its current form,” said David Torrance, a British political analyst and author. “The next five years will be a twin debate about two unions — the European Union and the United Kingdom.”
The questions of whether Britain stays whole and whether it remains in Europe are deeply entangled, with the outcome of one expected to heavily influence the other.
Cameron has landed in a situation where it is going to be ridiculously easy to overplay his hand with disastrous results if he does. If Britain divorces from Europe the Scots may tell Cameron he's going it alone.
Why's it okay for Scotland to secede from the UK but not okay for the UK to secede from the EU?
When the EU in/out referendum is held - and, rather than it being held in 2017 as Cameron originally planned it may end up being held in 2016, with Cameron bringing it forward - I shall be voting to leave the EU and I hope my side wins. Britain will be better off out of the EU and I hope that Britain's EU in/out referendum sets a precedence and that other EU countries follow suit to give them a chance to leave. After all, most EU citizens have never been asked whether or not they want to be part of it.
If the UK leaves the EU then, by all means, Scotland can leave the UK and rejoin the EU if it doesn't wish to leave the EU. But the Scottish people will need to be told that, if an independent Scotland were in the EU, they would have to join the euro at some point, and most Scots don't want to join the euro. So this will be a big problem the Scots will come up against should they decide to leave the UK to stay in the EU. Every EU Member State, bar the UK and Denmark, has to join the euro at some point. So an independent Scotland within the EU will have to do just that, even though most Scots wish to keep the pound.
And if the Scots don't mind being a little, rocky, sparsely-populated region of an EU that is in terminal decline politically and economically, then so be it. They'll be an insignificant piece of the world's most economically sclerotic region which is not fit for the 21st Century. Scotland will be almost forgotten about, forever dictated to by unelected foreigners in Brussels who are more interested in lining their own pockets than they are about Scotland. Meanwhile, the UK (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) will be a free, prosperous, 21st Century country out there in the big wide world trading globally with our fellow 87% of the world's countries who aren't in the EU, whilst the Scots look at us enviously within the inward-looking, economically-sclerotic EU, whilst they slowly sink beneath the waves onboard the EU Titanic. They'll eventually be begging Britain to take them back.
SCOTLAND will be protected from Tory attempts to scrap the Human Rights Act in Westminster, the UK Government has conceded.
In his conference speech Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted to end the UK’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and scrap the 1998 Human Rights Act replacing it with a British Bill of Rights.
A Scotland Office spokesman confirmed that human rights legislation is devolved to the Scottish Parliament because it was “built into the 1998 Scotland Act [and] cannot be removed [by Westminster].”
“Human rights are not in the gift of politicians to give. They must not be made a political plaything to be bestowed or scrapped on a whim.
“It’s time politicians accepted that they too have to follow the rules and that those rules include the civilising human rights standards Churchill championed.”
Scotland exempt from Tories’ Human Rights Act axe - The Scotsman
I feel sorry for the Scots if that's the case. They'll have to go on being dictated to by a criminals' charter which gives rights to the criminals at the expense of the victims.
The 1998 Human Rights Act is only concerned with the Human Rights of the criminals. If the Scotch want to continue with the Human Rights Act and put the criminals before the victim then that's a problem for the Scottish people, not those in the rest of the UK.
The Scots do have a record, though, of standing up for the criminal rather than the victim. We all remember how, in 2009, the Scottish Government (an SNP one, by the way, then led by Alex Salmond) angered the Americans by setting free Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi because he claimed to have just six months left to live due to cancer. He ended up living for another three years,
Good on new Justice Secretary Michael Gove (who is a Scot, by the way) in his desire to scrap this detestable piece of legislation and bring in our very own British Bill of Rights which will put the rights of the victims ahead of the rights of the criminals. Gove was a very good Education Secretary and will also become a very popular Justice Secretary if he scraps the Human Rights Act.
Also, when Britain secedes from the EU when it votes for independence next year then it can also leave the European Court of Human Rights, which it needs to be a member of when it's in the EU.
I'm glad the Tories have won a majority. For the last five years, as part of a coalition with the LibDems, they've had bleeding heart LibDems in the Cabinet who have blocked many great Conservative policies. But now it can be a true Tory, Right-wing Cabinet bringing in Right-wing policies which will make Britain a better place.
Why new Justice Secretary Michael Gove must not fail to axe Labour's hated Human Rights Act: JAMES SLACK offers 15 reasons
It is vital that Mr Gove succeeds in scrapping the Human Rights Act, with these 15 cases showing how criminals and legally aided lawyers have used the legislation to their advantage. Clockwise from left, Al Qaeda fanatic Abu Qatada was awarded £2,500 for being 'unlawfully detained' after being held indefinitely without trial following September 11. Aso Mohammed Ibrahim , 33, an Iraqi Kurd, left a 12-year-old dying under the wheels of his car while banned from driving. Twice refused asylum, he was allowed to stay under the Human Rights Act because he had fathered two children in Britain, giving him a right to a 'family life'. Mustafa Abdullahi, who held a knife to a pregnant woman's throat as he raped her, was given permission to stay in Britain, because of his family rights, while Congolese asylum seeker William Danga, who raped and molested two girls while fighting deportation, used Article 8 of the HRA to remain in this country. Soviet spy George Blake was awarded £4,700 after Britain breached his right to free expression by trying to stop him making money from his book, and Strasbourg ruled that axe-killer John Hirst and thousands of other convicts should be entitled to vote.
Why Michael Gove must not fail to axe Human Rights Act | Daily Mail Online
