Oil revenues loss

I agree with Phil Tate (Letters, 26 August) that the Conservatives squandered much of our oil revenues and got rid of BNOC, but Labour had 13 years to at least ensure all new fields were under state control, par- ticularly as 12 months after Labour came to office in 1997 Brent crude fell to as low as $10 a barrel. Therefore Labour is just as guilty of giving away Scotland’s oil and gas wealth.

More oil and gas has been extracted in Scottish waters than in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea but, as well as having a thriving shipbuilding industry, Norway’s transport infrastructure and sporting facilities even in the remotest of areas are far superior to ours. Today Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which was only started in 1990, has assets worth £1,000 billion whereas the UK’S national debt stands at £1,900bn and growing.

Opponents of self-government should at least acknowledge that in the first year of independence almost £6bn of the £13bn GERS notional deficit could be removed by the Scottish Government through savings on the amount of national debt interest and defence expenditure attributed to Scotland by GERS.

Regarding Reiner Luyken’s letter on oil price forecasting, at the time the White Paper was published the UK’S Department of Energy and Climate Change predicted oil would hit $130 a barrel by 2017 and when Brent Crude stood at $114 a barrel just prior to the 2014 referendum, David Cameron told his Aberdeen audience that voting for independence threatened the £200bn in oil revenues that would accrue if we remained part of the UK.

FRASER GRANT Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh