Last night (10/12/2014) Alex Salmond was interviewed by the ineffectual Kirsty Wark on Newsnight. When asked about the price of oil dropping from his prediction of $150 a barrel to under $70 barrel he said it did not matter, even if this held for 40 years. He then said it was a resource of one thousand billion pounds, that his government share of this would be 20%. And that this was worth about £40,000 to everyone in Scotland.
At the very best this was prevarication and equivocation. And Kirsty did nothing to pull him up on it.
The simple fact that Salmond was choosing to ignore is that it costs a lot of money to extract oil from deep beneath the North Sea, this is called the upstream cost. If this cost is greater than the market price (as it often now is in the North Sea) then it COSTS money to extract it. Each barrel makes a loss. Simple business facts that Kirsty should know.
Let’s take a look at some real world FACTS:
- According to the highly respected Economist newspaper  “the oil and gas is running out. Production fell by 6% a year on average between 1999 and 2010; since then it has dived by nearly 40%” and “it is nearly five times more expensive to extract a barrel of North Sea oil than it was in 2002. Investment in exploration, which once rose and fell with the oil price, is at rock bottom”.
- Also according to the Economist “nine billion barrels may remain unfound” which at $70 a barrel is $630 billion dollars, far short of Salmond’s boast. And we are talking about unproven reserves here. And the cost of extracting it may well be more than it is worth.
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Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish Secretary, has said plummeting oil prices would have created a £12 billion shortfall in a separate Scotland’s budget, which is equivalent to all day-to-day health spending for the period 2016 to 2019.
- The Scottish Government (LOL), in their May 2014 bulletin forecast that total UK oil and gas receipts (90% in Scotland) will fall from £6.1 billion in 2012-13 to £3.5 billion by 2018-19 assuming oil prices fall from $109 in 2013-14 to $99 in 2018-19 (the reality is that they could be half that) and that oil and gas production remains broadly stable at approximately 1.4 million barrels per day between 2014-15 and 2018-19 (no chance). This whole report is an utter joke. Yet Salmond uses it to bamboozle people with.
- The oil companies are in so much trouble with the low prices that George Osborne has just given them £450 million. Effectively the English taxpayer bailing out the Scots once again.
- Many of Salmond’s figures come from the N56 report. However this is derided and ridiculed by industry experts, even at $120 a barrel. ” N56 provide a typical oil value per well of $20 million and describe drilling costs as £10 to £30 million per well, i.e. $16 to $48 million in costs per well. So let’s take a deep breath, their median cost is $32 million and revenues $20 million. What are these guys smoking?” for instance.
- The country with the world’s largest oil reserves is socialist Venezuela (20% of world total). Their oil is vastly cheaper to extract than Scottish oil. Yet their economy is in the toilet.
- World demand for oil is very low, yet production capability has increased rapidly with relatively low cost shale oil and sand tars coming on line, of which there are immense reserves. Even the mighty OPEC are having to compete just to try and keep market share.
- Jake Molloy, regional organiser of the RMT union in Aberdeen, said: Â “The offshore industry is facing what amounts to a perfect storm of a falling oil prices on global markets, the shale revolution, rising costs to extract oil and gas from the North Sea, and smaller and harder-to-access fields.”
- Use Google news and you will find many stories about North Sea oil industry redundancies, with 35,000 jobs set to go. With three related onshore jobs for each upstream job that is 140,00 upcoming redundancies in an industry that Salmond tells us is booming.
- The North Sea has immense decommissioning costs as old wells run dry and have to be removed. The cost for this is estimated at £30bn. This is written off against oil revenue so makes a huge hole in government income.
- Sir Ian Wood, founder of Scotland’s world-leading oil services firm Wood Group, has accused the SNP of misleading voters with “highly inaccurate forecasts, false promises and misleading information“. And that the SNP’s  N-56 report, which claims there could be another 21million barrels of oil in unconventional shale reserves, “is an insult to the Scottish people”.
- Morgan Stanley are predicting an oil price of $43 a barrel. At this price the Scottish oil industry is finished.
As you can see I have provided links to all the evidence. It is blatantly obvious that the Scottish oil industry is unlikely to produce even a small fraction in government revenue of what Salmond claims. It is a fact that as a result an independent Scotland would be a very poor place indeed. Kirsty Wark’s failings made the interview look like an SNP party political broadcast as she failed to get the truth for the viewers. Scottish voters who believe Alex Salmond are obviously very deluded indeed, or severely cerebrally challenged. And it is no wonder that Alex Salmond lost the referendum, too many people can see right though him.
Also Newsnight need a much higher calibre of reporter.
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Kirsty Wark is a Scottish Been poodle (Champagne Socialist) & should never be allowed to interview Salmond or Sturgeon
Another good piece Bruce, keep it up
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Like all the anti SNP and anti Scottish drivel which constantly pours out of Westminster and their unionist propaganda merchants like yourself you don’t tell people why Westminster is so desperate to hold on to Scotland’s precious resources especially if, as you say , it is worthless to Scotland. I suppose you would even disagree that the McCrone report states that had Scotland achieved her independence 40 years ago and like Norway had all the benefit of her own resources then like Norway, Scotland would probably be the richest country in the world with one of the world’s hardest economies. Its far better for the likes of you and Westminster to continue talking Scotland and all things Scottish down. That way it easier to convince yourselves that you are our saviours and not the greedy tyrants which we in Scotland have come to recognise not only in your actions but in your never ending anti -Scottish rhetoric. As Scotland has never seen any of the benefits of the oil and gas its a bit silly for you and all you biased unionist mates like the BBC to constantly harp on about it and crow because the price has dropped this year. The only ones who lose because of that are the thieving gits who call themselves the English treasury. Most of us Scots wish that there was never one drop of oil in the waters around our country. Had that been the case then you and your greedy government would have washed your dirty hands of us years ago and this country would be free and most likely be thriving today.
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Excellent article! The political arena is crying out for someone to hold Salmond and his cronies to account. It is criminal that they have pumped in excess of £10m into generating the greatest con to the people of Scotland in generations. The Weirs must be wondering why they spent their winning on lies and propaganda!
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Very revealing & I guess we all knew this pre-referendum but it’s good that you’ve drilled down into the figures (pun not intended).
Hopefully the Scots won’t clock onto these blatant lies by AS because we still need the SNP to give Labour a whacking in GE 2015 in Scotland.
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This is absolute rubbish. I suppose the Financial Times, leading academics and the governments own McCrone report is lies too.
Gutter media and more spreading of false propaganda
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@Brian Murray
Is that the McCrone report myth that was debunked by the man himself! Really Brian, wake up and cure yourself of the measles of mankind! It is clouding your judgement.
@Alex Cochrane
It is about being part of a free single market economy on one island, which is diverse enough to absorb the fluctuating oil prices! Are you honestly suggesting that our finances would not have been impacted by a 40% shortfall in tax receipts from the North Sea? Once again, you are some who cannot digest the facts, as your anger from nationalism is clouding your judgement.
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EVEN IF I WAS TO LIVE IN RAGS WITH NO OIL I WOULD STILL WANT INDEPENDENCE YOU THICK HEADS DON’T GET IT DO YOU.
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Schoolboy figures there Bruce…you shouldn’t let your personal feelings cloud your journalism…if you can call it that…
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Alex Salmond generally lies about stuff.
Look at his £100bn for Trident replacement. Five times what the Government say it will cost.
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But the UK government lies.
Take defence, Scotland is getting well shafted there.
“SCOTLAND receives £1.9 billion less than its population share of government defence spending on major projects, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed.
The response by the Ministry of Defence appears to undermine claims made by opponents of independence that one of the areas of biggest loss to Scotland would be defence spending.
The document also appears to contradict claims made by defence ministers that it is impossible to show a breakdown of spending in the nations and English regions of the UK, after it revealed that each item of spending has a special regional code.
The revelation has led to claims by the Scottish National Party that ministers have held back on regional spending to hide the defence underspend in Scotland.
The FoI focussed on UK defence contracts which are protected from European Union competition rules and can be awarded to domestic countries only for national security reasons.
Between 2007-8 and 2011-12, Scotland received £3.17 billion of work out of £60bn – a shortfall of about £1.9bn.”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-spending-on-defence-sells-scots-short-by-1-9bn-1-2748605
“Independence would save Scots taxpayers £1.5 billion defence bill, think tank claims
Taxpayers in an independent Scotland would pay £1.5 billion less on defence of the new realm than they do today, a think tank has claimed.
and A report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) estimates that it would cost around £1.8 billion a year to defend an independent Scotland – the equivalent of 1.3 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product.
This is around £1.5 billion less than Scottish taxpayers currently pay to the Treasury to fund defence costs for the entire United Kingdom.
The report, A’ the Blue Bonnets: Defending an Independent Scotland, by Stuart Crawford and Richard Marsh, claims that independence would bring a substantial reduction in defence costs for Scottish taxpayers.
They claim that an independent Scotland would operate a “relatively modest” defence structure, with a “regional rather than global focus,” comparable to that of other small European states such as Denmark, Norway and Ireland. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9609255/Independence-would-save-Scots-taxpayers-1.5-billion-defence-bill-think-tank-claims.html
“THE controversial downgrading of Rosyth naval dockyard by John Major’s government was carried out despite one of his ministers warning him the Fife site was cheaper and safer to run than similar facilities in the south of England, according to newly-released government papers.
The decision in 1993 to strip all nuclear submarine refitting work from the Scottish yard in favour of Devonport in Plymouth sparked a fierce backlash against the Conservative government, and was a leading factor in the party being virtually wiped out in Scotland at the 1997 general election.
Now, declassified documents show the depth of ill-feeling in Whitehall and the government in the run-up to the decision made by then defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind, at the time MP for Edinburgh Pentlands.
Amid claims by senior civil servants of the Ministry of Defence’s “south of England bias”, the papers detail a strained relationship between the MoD and the Scottish Office.
They include a draft minute prepared for then Scottish secretary Ian Lang and sent to Mr Major, which made clear that the “consideration of objective criteria… all point to nuclear Rosyth”.
The SNP last night said the revelations showed the MoD’s “utter disregard for Scotland”.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/rosyth-shipyard-downgrade-due-to-english-bias-1-2796671
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Do the rest of the world and the UK make more money with oil?? Has the oil price only fallen in the parrallel universe of an Independent Scotland?? There is also a comment in the article from Alistair Carmichael – we all know carmichael is a confirmed liar.