Black Gold

This from comrade and friend Mr Williamson just about sums up the issue of the day (oh and listen to Eddie and get your finger out yer RSS) : "...eyebrows have to be raised about the decision announced yesterday to build Britian's first new oil refinery in decades (the tenth in total) and locate it in the NE of England. This Teesside oil refinery, run by SONHOE, will be located as close to the North Sea oil fields as could be possible in England, at a cost of £2billion.

SONHOE have claimed that this will creat 4000 jobs in the region and the refinery will specialise in refining heavy
crude oil from the North Sea. The plant aims to refine 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Given that "British" North Sea oil fields are currently yielding around 4,000,000 barrels of crude oil per day this is a big undertaking by SONHOE.

Viewed on its own this may be as transparent as it seems. But its possible this new oil refinery may be one part of a bigger Westminster strategy to continue syphoning off North Sea oil in the eventuality of Scottish independence. This new refinery could involve the re-routing of North Sea crude oil so it doesn't have to go through the refinery at Grangemouth in Scotland.

Whatever the thinking behind this announcement it gives lie to the idea that North Sea oil is running out. Not that the London government have ever bought into this lie. Its for Scottish consumption only.

The DTI estimated a couple of years ago that there were still 43.8 billion barrels of extractable oil in the North Sea.
That is equivalent to around £3 trillion dollars at current oil prices of $80 a barrel. That's about £1,700 billion sterling worth of extractable oil. And this does not include revenues from North Sea gas. (Compare this potential wealth with the Scottish government's current £32 billion block grant from London to run the whole country.)

The idea that the London government are deceiving Scots about the quantity and value of North Sea oil is not news. A scandalous Westminster deception was confirmed in 2005 when official government papers from the early 1970s were finally declassified and released.

It was discovered that Westminster had pocketed £200 billion of North Sea Oil revenue over the last 30 years, equivalent to £170,000 for every man, woman, and child in Scotland. This factual amount was never projected, it was downplayed, hidden, and then lied about, for political expediency. Simply because London they knew that this vast wealth could have transformed Scotland into one of the richest countries in the world." More here.