Scotland, Oil, Politics & Lies

By Ian Stewart

The words, of course, are those of Robert Burns, Ploughman & Poet, and refer to the 1707 union of England and Scotland. Robert Burns died over 200 years ago and the world is a very much changed place since 1707. However, the question as to whether it was a good or a bad union for Scotland still rumbles on. What follows are some personal observations on the benefits (or otherwise) to Scotland by being / remaining part of the 'Union'.

Q : If, as is often claimed, the people of Scotland are such a dead weight around the shoulders of the English . . . why have the Westminster parties constantly appeared desperate to keep us within the union (since the 1880s) using financial systems such as those devised by George (later Viscount) Goschen in the 19th century and Joel (later Lord) Barnett in the 20th ?

A : How about . . . Oil, water, electricity, the Faslane nuclear submarine base, the Dundrennan military range near Kirkcudbright (which is the only range in the UK where Depleted Uranium shells are test-fired), several designated 'low-flying areas' in the Borders, the military firing range at Cape Wrath (which located in a UNESCO European Geopark) and various potential nuclear waste disposal sites ?

'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and / or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.'

'One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.'

Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Germany (1933 - 1945)

Over the last few years, mainly due to increased access to the Internet and the release of government documents under the 'Thirty Year Rule' (the phrase commonly used for the legislation allowing 'sensitive' government documents to be witheld from public scrutiny until they are 30 years old), the truth has finally surfaced about how the British public, and the Scots in particular, were deceived about North Sea oil production and revenue. Only now are we finding out the real facts and figures and in a position to refute those lies which we were told by succesive Westminster governments for all those years.

'Facts are chiels that winna ding, an downa be disputed' - Robert Burns
( Facts are things which cannot be manipulated or disputed. )

In 1975, the McCrone report said :

'The balance of payments gain for Scotland from the North Sea oil would easily swamp the existing deficit, whatever its size, and transform Scotland into a country with a substantial and chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its [Scotland's] currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of the Norwegian kroner.'

Scotland has been described as, 'an island of coal floating on a sea of oil' !

Oil & Gas Production

Since the late 1960s, North Sea oil companies operating in the North Sea have paid £140 billion in taxation to the Treasury.

Oil was found in the North Sea in 1965 and production started in 1967. Since then, the equivalent of 37 billion barrels of oil have been extracted, with UK production peaking at 2.9 million barrels / day in 1999.

Twenty years ago it was predicted that North Sea oil would run out by the year 2000, but the Forties Field is still producing oil, 33 years after the first oil was pumped ashore. And the Claymore platform, which Talisman purchased from Elf Aquitaine in 2000, has been in production since 1977 and is expected to keep pumping oil for another 30 years.

Petroleum experts believe there are some 300 fields off the coast of Britain still to be explored and tapped properly.

An estimated 920 million tonnes of recoverable crude oil remain in North Sea oil fields, enough to last another 44 years.
(The loose but simple rule of thumb for conversion is that a barrel a day is roughly 50 tonnes a year)

Five years ago, BP sold the Forties Field to Texas-based Apache, who have since invested $2 billion in the field. At the time it was sold, the pre-developed reserves were in the region of 150 million barrels, at the end of last year the figure on Apache's books was 200 million barrels.

The Buzzard field, found in June 2001 and the largest discovered in the past 25 years, has reserves of almost 400 million barrels with an average output of 180,000-190,000 barrels per day.

In May 2008, an independent British firm called Dana Petroleum announced that it had found a new oilfield at West Rinnes and BP, which is investing $1 billion in the tapping of oil troves in the North Sea, found a new oil trove called Kinnoull.

Industry estimates have placed a figure of 25.5 billion - 30 billion barrels still to be recovered. However, in June 2008, Dr Richard Pike, a former oil industry consultant and now the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry said, 'Rather than only getting 20 to 30 billion barrels from the North Sea we are probably looking at more than twice that amount'.
Dr Pike claims that the industry knows the true figures but refuses to release them because of commercial secrecy.

Dr Pike's figures are supported by others in the field. Professor Peter Odell, of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, has said, 'It's not quite as much as we've used already but it's not far short' and, according to Professor Alex Kemp, a petroleum economics expert at Aberdeen University, 'The remaining reserves could be 20 to 22 billion barrels equivalent and on optimistic estimates could be over 30 billion barrels.

Scotland's gas fields contain a maximum remaining reserve of 1,330 billion cubic metres. In 2006 oil and gas companies in Scotland exported over £4.7 billion of goods and services, making it Scotland's largest export sector.

Following extraction of all this oil and gas, an often overlooked opportunity will arise. The porous rocks beneath the seabed of the North Sea and the disused oil and gas fields could provide storage for the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide generated from all of Europe's power stations for hundreds of years.

That's an awful lot of tax which is going to accrue to the Treasury in future years !

Oil and gas production from the North Sea turned around the UK's trade deficit in fuels from a peak of 4% of GDP in 1974 into a surplus of 2% of GDP in 1983, leading to a 20% appreciation of sterling's effective exchange rate.

In May 2008, John Hutton (Business Secretary) publishing official figures showing that the UK had the cheapest diesel and second cheapest unleaded petrol in Western Europe before fuel tax and duty were added by the Treasury.

There is tax (plus VAT) on all petrol or diesel fuel road fuel purchased in the UK. The total taxation accounts for a whopping 69.9% of the price of unleaded petrol and 67.3% of diesel fuel.

Electricity Generation

As those of us who live here well know, Scotland, with around 25% of the total European wind energy resource, is possibly the windiest country in Europe. The potential wind generating capacity (36.5 GW) is higher than Scotland requires (10.5 GW), thus Scotland could be a net exporter of wind-produced electricity.

Scotland also has 25% of Europe's tidal energy and 10% of the European wave resource. Scottish Government estimates state that, by 2020, 10% of Scotland's electricity production could come from marine resources.

Currently, there are over 80 Hydro-power stations in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. At the end of August 2009, there were 70 onshore wind farms in Scotland with almost 350 turbines.

Scotland already had significant renewable energy output (11%), slightly more than 1.3 GW (1,300 MW), from the existing Hydro-power plants such as those at Ben Cruachan (400 MW), Foyers (305 MW), Mossford (247 MW), Sloy (160 MW) and Lochaber (84 MW), even before the Glendoe scheme at Fort Augustus (1,00 MW) was opened by HM The Queen in June 2009. Glendoe, on its own, has the capacity to provide enough power for a city the size of Glasgow and the total output from Hydro power in Scotland is now about 25% of of peak demand.

Not only do we have a head start on the rest of the UK in Hydro power, we are already ahead with wind power generation. Total current capacity is 1.8GW and planning permission had been granted for 3GW of onshore wind energy projects with a further 3GW in the pipeline. Projects such as Whitelee (322 MW) is Europe's largest onshore wind farm with 140 turbines and Blacklaw (97 MW), currently operating with 42 turbines but having permission to add a further 12, which would take their total capacity to 142.6 MW. Various other onshore sites currently in the planning or construction phases will add another 7.6 GW and approval granted for offshore sites in January of 2010 will put another 11 GW into the system.

The problem, of course, is that much of this generating capacity is not conveniently placed next to the usage requirement. In order to transmit the electricity, the grid capacity required upgrading. Following the initial planning application in September 2005, there was five year campaign against the line but Scottish Government approval was granted in January 2010 for the 135 mile long upgrade. In February 2010, Scottish Southern Energy released a map (shown on right) detailing the proposed route of the Beauly to Denny transmission line and the removal of associated pylon lines in the Cairngorms.

Scotland has a massive overcapacity in electricity generation, from all sources, to meet peak demand. On the other hand, England & Wales, the latter having the biggest Hydro-power station in the UK at Dinorwig (1,728 MW), have to import electricity from Scotland and France to meet demand, so the National Grid needs this additional capacity.

However, their transmission charges have been controversial for some time because, while companies in the North of Scotland pay £21.58 per kW (kilowatt) to put their electricity on to the grid, generators in the South of England are subsidised, by up to £6.97 per kW in London.

The purpose of the subsidies is to give power generators an incentive to produce electricity closer to big demand centres, such as the southeast of England, improving transmission efficiency and cutting customer bills. But Scottish power companies have argued that this regime discriminates against an area where there is more wind and more potential to generate power. Grumbling about the system turned to outrage in January when it was disclosed that National Grid believed that charges could be ramped up to £50/kW for Northern Scotland, and even higher for island wind generators. These proposed increased were revised in March when it was suggested that charges of between £30 and £35 per kW were now more likely.

The foregoing is in stark contrast to natural resource poor and over populated England, particularly the South East.

The following is taken from an article in The Telegraph on 6th May 2008 : Over-populated England

'News that England is poised to become the most crowded nation in Western Europe will come as little surprise to the millions who already battle their way to work in London and the South East. Within two years, England will overtake Holland as the most populous major country - and it will get progressively worse.'

'If current trends continue, then the UK population could rise to 108 million in a lifetime. Until fairly recently, demographers believed the population would stabilise at around 60 million and then decline. According to the Office for National Statistics, by 2056, England's population will rise to 521 people for every square kilometre compared with 390 individuals per square kilometre in 2006.'

'England is already one of the most densely populated countries in the world, let alone in Europe. It has nearly twice the population density of Germany, four times that of France and twelve times that of the USA. Inevitably, the South will take the brunt of the increase, placing further strain on housing and transport, which are already almost at breaking point.'

'The inevitable consequences are less space, more costly land, smaller but dearer homes, congested roads, packed trains, overburdened hospitals, oversubscribed schools, new towns and pressures on resources.'

'Since England will remain an attractive destination for many immigrants, who often bring their entrepreneurial dynamism with them, it would help matters if more people moved to other, less crowded parts of Britain. But we are such a top-heavy nation, with a capital city more dominant than any in Europe, that this is unlikely to happen unless more jobs are created elsewhere in the country.'

Better add LAND to that earlier 'things they want' list of oil, water and electricity !

The McCrone Report ~ April 1975

The original report was produced by Professor RGL (Gavin) McCrone, who was a Scottish Office economist at the time, in the weeks before the February 1974 general election, which was won by Labour under Harold Wilson, for a Westminster committee. It was immediately classified as 'secret', a status maintained by both Labour and Conservative administrations in Westminster for 30 years, only being made public in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act.

The April 1975 date relates to that on which the report was submitted to the Cabinet Office in London during 'an assessment on the economics of Scottish Independence'. In reality, the whole exercise was intended as, 'a way of taking the wind out of the SNP's sails'. In the background was the aftermath of the 1973-1974 Oil Crisis, created by OPEC's reaction to US support for Israel in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, as a result of which the price of oil quadrupled to nearly US$12 per barrel in 1974.

In 2010, it's around US$80 per barrel, having peaked at $145 in July 2008 !

What was so dangerous, as far as a Westminster government was concerned, were the conclusions reached by the Professor . . .

'Britain is now counting so heavily on North Sea oil to redress its balance of payments that it is easy to imagine England in dire straits without it.'

'This paper has shown that the advent of North Sea oil has completely overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish nationalism. An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time into the future.'

'The balance of payments gain for Scotland from the North Sea oil would easily swamp the existing deficit, whatever its size, and transform Scotland into a country with a substantial and chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its [Scotland's] currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of the Norwegian kroner.'

'If, in five years' time North Sea oil is contributing massively to the UK budget, while the economic and social condition of West Central Scotland continues in the poor state that it is today, it would be hard to imagine conditions more favourable to the growth of support for the nationalist movement. Very determined steps to urgently transform economic conditions in Scotland will therefore be necessary and the Scottish people will have to be persuaded that their problems really have received the attention and expenditure they deserve if this outcome is to be avoided.'

This icon    indicates a link to a text file (.pdf format) which can be read or downloaded.

The McCrone Report (in full)  

Oilgate ~ Further comment on the McCrone Report  

How the black gold was hijacked ~ North Sea oil and the betrayal of Scotland    

An article published in The Independent newspaper on Friday 9th December 2005.

The Big Lie (2000) ~ By Niall Aslen    

For countless years, the British Unionist Parties have been telling the people of Scotland that they are subsidized by the English Taxpayer and that Independence is the certain road to ruin.

The Great Deception (2005) ~ By Niall Aslen    

How the GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland) figures break down.

Cancelling Trident ~ The Economic and Employment Consequences for Scotland    

A report which was commissioned in 2007 by the Scottish CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and the STUC (Scottish Trades Union Congress) and was published on 11th March of that year.

One thing which is certain is that the number of civilian jobs which directly rely upon the Trident programme is nowhere near the 10,000 - 11,000 often quoted by the media. Ascertaining the actual figure is almost impossible as the figures supplied by government have varied from a low of 936 to a high of 3,180. The fairly consistent figure 'appears' to be approximately 1,800.

On the 21st February 2005, in response to a question, Geoff Hoon stated that the number of civilian jobs which directly rely upon the Trident programme in Scotland was estimated to be 936.

In reply to a question from Katy Clark MP asking how many civilian personnel were employed at Faslane and Coulport, Adam Ingram MP stated that there were a total of 1,750 MoD civilians. Of these, 1,080 of these were at Faslane and 670 at Coulport. He added that, in addition, Babcock Naval Services employed around 1,430 across both sites. Combining these figures gives a total civilian workforce of 3,180.

The number of potential Scottish job openings at risk, civilian and military, direct, indirect and induced, from Trident cancellation in 2022-2027 is estimated as 2,191.The number of civilian jobs would be 1,891. Trident indirect and induced civilian employment across Scotland would be less than 1,800.

This icon     indicates a link to a video file (.flv format) which can be watched or downloaded.

Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland

On 3rd of November 1975 the first barrel of oil was pumped from the North Sea on to Scotland's shores. This film, made by Hayley Millar for BBC Scotland, shows how the modern history of Scotland is intrinsically linked to the black gold being pumped out of the North Sea. It was first shown on Wednesday 4th June 2008 but only on BBC Scotland, it was repeated twice on the BBC Parliament channel and finally on BBC Four on 23rd July 2008.

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4	Part 5	Part 6	Part 7

Why didn't the authorities ever show it on either of the main National BBC channels, BBC1 or BBC2 ?

Diomhair (Secret)

A Gaelic language programme (with sub-titles), originally shown on BBC Alba on Friday 26th December 2008 and repeated on Friday 6th March 2009, which relates the story of . . . 'how successive Labour and Conservative governments up until the 1970s worked behind the scenes to discredit the Home Rule movement and the SNP.'

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4	Part 5	Part 6

Who Killed Willie McCrae ?

This 1991 film, made for Channel 4 ~ Scottish Eye, looks into the death of Willie MacRae in April 1985. The high profile anti-nuclear activist and Scottish nationalist lawyer was found slumped at the wheel of his crashed car, with a gunshot wound to his head. MacRae had been heavily involved in various campaigns to prevent nuclear dumping in Scotland, including defeating Thatcher's plans for nuclear dumping at Mullwharchar. The verdict, after an official investigation which lasted two days, was one of 'No Suspicious Circumstances'. Repeated requests for an official inquiry into Mr MacRae's death have been turned down.

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3