More oil found in the North Sea

I noticed, hidden on a wee sidebar on the BBC Scotland website, news of a significant oil find in the North Sea. It wasn't on the BBC lunchtime news. Clearly, with the ongoing BP problems in the US, oil might not be a sexy news story right now, but it's still big news for Scotland!

EnCore, the company involved say that

"Initial analysis of the data indicates that both Catcher East and Catcher are likely to be part of a single significant oil accumulation."

and

"the surrounding prospects in the block, which have yet to be appraised, could add very significantly to this number. The Catcher drilling programme has to date delivered a truly exceptional result"

It's not too late to set up an oil fund for Scotland, and to prevent the extra revenues flowing to the treasury from this find being used to plug the gaps in the economy. In the 1980s, the Tory government floated along on our oil, and used it to pay for the unemployment of those years: we should not let it slip through our fingers this time. It's still Scotland's oil.



UPDATE: don't know if it made the 6.30 news, but I see the report is on the 10.30 late news. Woo!

SNP: learning from the past

Clearly 1975 is further back in history than the 80s, but I believe learning from the past is pretty important. Councillor Owen Thomson just popped an article up on facebook which reminded me why.

Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor of the Telegraph, brings news of recently released details from the National Archives of Scotland.

Records from 1975, just released, show Government officials admitted that the discovery of oil had transformed the economic case for separation.

They calculated that Scots’ average income would increase by up to 30 per cent per head and it could be “credibly argued” that repealing the Act of Union was to Scotland’s advantage.

I would love to have the time to nip through to the capital and have a look through the papers to see what other gems are there; it sounds from the article that the team of eleven civil servants in the room had quite mixed views on the matter.

It also makes you wonder - if Labour and the Tories could both conspire to hide this from us then, what are they hiding now?

It's Norway's Oil

Like Leaves on the Line, I'm always interested to see the progress of small independent nations. I think this news rips the arc out of the Daily Record's oh-so-amusing pun.

True, Ireland and Iceland have some way to go on their road to recovery, but I note that EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said the "international perception was that Ireland's economic problems were worse than they are". Wonder what he'd say to certain Labour politicians in Scotland?

Before one of the cynical unionists appears to make a comment - I appreciate that a lot of our oil revenues have been squandered over the years, but the recent discovery of new gas reserves would suggest that all is certainly not lost.

Norwegian generosity

I noticed amongst my news feeds during the week, while the G20 were fretting over the future of the world economy and the UK Government starts to consider calling the IMF, there was a small article on Reuters which gave an indication of where some of this bailout money was coming from.

Oil-rich Norway said on Saturday it was ready to offer up to 30 billion crowns ($4.56 billion) to support the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and called for the fund to play a bigger role in supervising financial markets.

Fancy that. Labour have been gleefully gunning for the arc of prosperity, but here we have cast iron evidence of how a small, oil rich nation can contribute to the world. Norway have invested their oil wealth, rather than squander it across the decades. $4.46 billion is pocket money in a fund worth $300 billion. Remarkably, this generosity comes at a time when their oil fund isn't even in the peachiest of health.

How much better off would we be as a nation if North Sea oil had been invested in this way? What do we have to show for striking black gold? As a Scottish Nationalist, you would expect me to argue the It's Scotland's Oil case. And yes, it's ours. The McCrone revelations showed that our only mistakes were underestimation of our potential wealth, and stopping our campaign too soon. I believe that we have been incredibly lucky to have oil. The majority of nations have not been so fortunate, but not having oil hasn't hindered their independence.

I have heard the SNP accused by unionists of various political persuasions of being selfish and greedy for even trying to ask for our fair share of our oil revenues to spend or invest. Who's to say that if we had taken a truely prudent approach back in the seventies that we wouldn't be able to give our neighbours a helping hand?

Norway's example of how to make the most of a finite resource should be an example to the UK government. It's not too late.