HOW BLAIR ‘ANNEXED’ NORTH SEA OIL

TONY Blair redrew the maritime boundary between Scotland and England to secretly ‘annex’ oil fields for England.

As Prime Minister, Mr Blair passed a law changing the coastal demarcation to take seven lucrative oil wells into the English side.

Previously, the coastal boundary was a straight horizontal line jutting out into the North Sea. But with the agreement of the late First Minister Donald Dewar, Mr Blair passed an order in 1 making it a curved line, sloping 70 miles out to the north and annexing 6,000 square miles of Scottish waters.

Mr Blair’s move came the year that the Scottish parliament was formed.

Former diplomat Craig Murray said the oil grab was a strike designed to disadvantage Scotland’s case for independence. He wrote on his blog: ‘The pre-1 border was already very favourable to England.

‘In 1 4, while I was Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I had already queried whether it was too favourable to England. I little anticipated that five years later Blair would push it 70 miles north!’

He urged Scots to take it to an international court, adding: ‘I have no doubt the outcome would be a very great deal better for Scotland than the Blair-Dewar line, which would cost Scotland billions.’

The White Paper on independence says the Scottish Government believes Scotland’s share of North Sea oil revenue will rise from 4 per cent to 8. per cent over the next 30 years. Scotland would also try to get more wind farm subsidies from the rest of the UK.