Oil Production
Fri., May 09, 2008. 12:56.
Salmond "living in fool's paradise" about declining oil production.
Greens today slammed Alex Salmond as "living in a fool's paradise" for failing to plan for life after the peak in oil production, and a leading oil analyst described the First Minister's predictions as "simply wrong".
Questioned by Green MSP Patrick Harvie at First Minister's Questions yesterday (1), Salmond claimed that Scotland will remain a net exporter of oil "for decades to come". The energy industry's view is that Scotland's consumption of oil will exceed North Sea output in less than ten years (2), there is clear evidence that North Sea output peaked in 1999 (3), and the Royal Bank of Scotland's most recent data shows that output is down by 14% over the last year alone (4).
Patrick Harvie MSP said:
"For the leader of a party which has been addicted to oil rhetoric since the 1970s, Alex Salmond is singularly ill-informed about the state of the industry. He's apparently oblivious of the fact that North Sea oil has been declining since 1999, which even Mike Rumbles knows. The absurd suggestion he made today that Scotland will export oil for generations to come shows that he's in complete denial about plummeting North Sea production.
"The First Minister was invited to prepare Scotland for the post-oil world, but instead he would apparently rather live in a fool's paradise. It's absurd for him so suggest that spending £10m on a marine energy prize is enough to prepare for a low carbon economy, especially alongside the SNP's massively unsustainable expansion of the motorway network.
"The solutions for peak oil are the same as those for climate change, but what's required is determined action, not familiar words about long term targets which were announced a year ago. It's increasingly clear that the SNP's historical dependence on oil has not been broken."
Chris Skrebowski of the Energy Institute said:
"Alex Salmond's predictions are simply wrong. Even with optimistic assumptions about future North Sea oil production, and even if Scotland was allocated all of that production, an independent Scotland would be likely to be a net importer of oil by 2015 or 2016. By that stage, given the global decline in output which has already begun, we will have to buy oil on the open market for two or three times the current price.
"It's completely fraudulent to suggest that Scotland can just live off its oil wealth now."
Notes
1. For the Official Report of this week's First Minister's Questions, see: http://tinyurl.com/6mk4rp (Scottish Parliament site)
2. See Chris Skrebowski's comments above. To contact Chris, please ring 020 7467 7117. For more on the Energy Institute, see: http://www.energyinst.org.uk
3. For coverage of that peak, see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3777413.stm
4. April 2008 figures from the Royal Bank of Scotland. See: http://www.rbs.com/content/economic/downloads/uk/oil_gas_may_08.pdf
Contact the Scottish Greens' press team on 07909 933 074.