New Investment Plans for North Sea Oil Industry.

There has been recent heavy investment into the North Sea oil industry, as the Norwegian state-owned oil giant Statoil has announced it will a total of £18 billion in total into the industry to keep their fields pumping up until at least 2057.

In terms of the employment in the industry, the new investments plans will provide a massive boost. It is expected that 300 new jobs will be available in a new operation centre in Aberdeen, and a further 700 will be created in the process of the investment plans being implemented.

The plans came to light when David Cameron was on a visit to Norway. Some may say that this is a sign that the oil wealth will go to helping all areas of the UK, as it was the UK prime minister which signed the deal. That, unfortunately, is not the case. It has been shown that throughout the course of the North Sea oil history that Scotland rarely sees the effect of a £1.5 trillion industry, as all the revenues goes straight down to the London Exchequer.


The oil revenues raise an average of £30 billion per year across the whole of the UK, and since Scotland has 90% of the reserves, that means we should be getting £27 billion of the revenues surely. Again however, that does not happen. What we receive is a budget that gets shrunk each year; the budget we received last year amounted to £23 billion, which means Westminster gets £4 billion of the revenues Scotland made.

This recent heavy investment into the industry once again proves that the Scottish economy is thriving, and no doubt has the potential to prosper even further if we gain independence. As it means that the revenues we accrue can go directly to helping the people, industries, infrastructure and the society of Scotland as whole.

These recent events also should trump any argument saying that our oil industry is not profitable enough to help our nation survive on its own, or is dwindling fast. Unfortunately though, no amount of heavy investment into the industry will block out the scaremongering from the media, government and unionists.

It is only with full independence form Westminster that Scotland can truly show what it can do when competing on the global market, and to truly provide a secure and viable economic future for Scotland that will benefit the welfare of our society, which is undoubtedly the most important issue in any nation. Not fighting pointless wars or keeping needless weapons of mass destruction on our doorstep.