SCOTLAND would be “sitting on a £1 trillion pot” if Westminster had handled the country’s North Sea oil wealth differently, according to new analysis.
The SNP used figures dating back thirty years to work out how much could have been in a Scottish sovereign wealth fund if the UK Government had managed North Sea revenues in the same way as Norway.
The Nordic nation currently has the largest wealth fund in the world, worth roughly $2.2 trillion today – or around $390,000 per Norwegian citizen.
The “Oljefondet” (oil fund) was founded in 1990 to invest surplus revenues from North Sea oil, and the first payment of around $150 million was made in 1996.
The SNP’s analysis of Scotland’s oil revenues, which also used figures going back to 1996, suggested that an equivalent Scottish oil fund would have been worth around £671 billion ($900m) in 2025.
By 2030, the SNP analysis projected that the Scottish oil fund would be worth £923bn ($1.24trn).
Richard Thomson, the SNP candidate in the Aberdeen South by-election, said: “While the Norwegians can rest easy knowing they’ve got a two-trillion-dollar fund, Scots have got nothing to show for our country's immense natural wealth, thanks to Westminster.
“We’ve missed the opportunity of a century here – if Westminster had made the same choices as Norway, a Scottish oil fund could’ve been worth almost a trillion pounds by 2030 giving the Scottish people certainty in times of need.
“That’s enough money to pay the Scottish pensions bill every year for the next 80 years and we cannot afford to miss a second energy opportunity that lies before us this time round.
“We have a world class oil and gas industry that we can protect while growing a second world class renewables industry right by its side – by putting Scotland’s energy in Scotland’s hands we can ensure that energy wealth enriches Scots, not Westminster.
“Right now we should be sitting on a £1 trillion pot, but instead we are pleading with Westminster to end its tax on our energy that is ruining 1000 jobs a month – that’s exactly why we need a fresh start with independence.”
Earlier this year, a landmark study from some of Scotland’s leading economists, including Professor Graeme Roy, the chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, found that Scotland’s oil and gas had increased measured economic output by almost £1 trillion in today’s prices.
Professor Niall MacKenzie, another of the study’s authors, previously told The National that the Norwegian government mandated by law that any North Sea oil and gas extraction activity had to have a majority Norwegian ownership.
“That was making sure that the money came back into Norway and they had control over the process," he said. “In the UK, we had a rapid extraction approach, where basically we wanted to get the stuff out of the ground as quickly as we could. That was in part because the UK Government recognised this was a huge windfall they could then use to resolve things like the balance of payments problem."
Thomson is aiming to return to Westminster in the Aberdeen South by-election on June 18, which was called after the constituency’s MP Stephen Flynn was elected to Holyrood.
The Conservatives are aiming to upset the SNP with a win in the constituency, calling for voters who would back Reform UK to support them tactically.
It has been called an “energy by-election”, due to the importance of oil and gas to the area’s economy. Speaking to The Sunday National last week, Thomson said that was a label he could understand.
However, he said that Westminster parties cannot be relied upon to manage Scotland’s energy.
“Thanks to the disastrous taxation policy of the Conservatives – the energy profit levy, which has created the cliff edge in the North Sea that Ed Miliband and the Labour Government in London are now determined to push us over – thanks to the continued imposition of that inflexible tax, we're killing investment in the North Sea,” Thomson said.
“Reform, like the other UK Westminster parties, simply want to strip out every pound that they can from the North Sea without sending a penny back – and without either making or enabling the requisite investment in the energy transition that we need.”
