Do Scots have little or no awareness of the scale of value of offshore oil and gas assets in the recent past or now?

By stewartb

I fear that a majority of the electorate in Scotland still have NO IDEA of – (perhaps even conditioned to have no interest in?) – Scotland’s indigenous energy assets and their potential significance for their own lives and those of their children and grandchildren. Little or no awareness of the scale of value of offshore oil & gas assets in the recent past (and still remaining) – Scotland’s great missed opportunity of a generation – and the developing renewable electricity generation assets, their current and realisable potential value – the about to be great missed opportunity of another generation!

And NO IDEA how they and the young folk in their families would benefit from a Scotland having a government with the agency available to – and considered normal and essential in – independent nation-states like Norway and Denmark.

When it comes to energy, the opportunity costs of our present constitutional status are huge!

When marking the coming on stream of the Moray West offshore wind farm in April 2024 – a site with the capacity to generate (just) 882 MW of electricity – Ian Murray MP, Secretary of State for Scotland said: ‘.. Ocean Winds’ Moray West offshore wind farm – which will power 1.3 million homes – half the homes in Scotland’.

Source: https://www.offshorewindscotland.org.uk/news/2025/april/24/moray-west-becomes-fully-operational/

That’s from just one moderately sized offshore wind farm! amongst many operational and in the pipeline.

On the Western Link electricity transmission cable running from Hunterston to the England/Wales border, National Grid has stated: ‘Operational since 2017, the link supported over 450 jobs during planning and development and has transmitted over 30,000GWh of electricity during its first five years of operation – enough to power all the homes in Wales for the same period. Now that is a ‘fact’ that won’t get mainstream media coverage!

There are five additional offshore transmission cables of comparable capacity – Eastern Green Links 1 to 5 – under construction, in development or at the planning stage designed to exploit electricity generated by wind offshore Scotland. Each will have the capacity to transport 2 GW of electricity from Scotland: each will have the capacity to power c.2 million homes. Take Mr Murray’s statement: do the sums!

And whilst these energy transfers may be termed ‘exports’, they have none of the usual economic and fiscal benefits that come to an independent nation-state engaged in exporting something of value e.g. earning foreign currency and gaining the confidence of the International financial markets based on balance of trade factors.

7 thoughts on “Do Scots have little or no awareness of the scale of value of offshore oil and gas assets in the recent past or now?

  1. Starmer.

    KEIR Starmer has suggested he didn’t read through his highly-contentious “island of strangers” speech on immigration in advance.

    Speaking to the Observer, the Prime Minister said he should have held the speech “up to the light a bit more” before delivering it to the nation.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Since oil and gas were discovered in the late 1960s the unionist parties and their media cronies have sought to hide or minimise the extent of the oil and gas resources. Indeed the Labour government suppressed the report which indicated the sheer size of the potential wealth it would bring to Scotland. They were also frightened by the potency of the SNP slogan, “It’s Scotland’s Oil”.

    There then followed a mixture of tactics, contempt (Scotland’s too wee and not very good.’, bribery (Nationalised oil will be headquartered in Scotland.), damping down expectations (it will run out in a few years). This continued right into this century, with similar tactics being used against renewables.

    Because of this continual lying, misinformation, demoralisation, a fair chunk of the population does not realise how potentially wealthy Scotland is. It is this wealth which underpins sterling.

    Alasdair Macdonald

    Liked by 4 people

  3. Fairly sure that of the renewables energy production figure for 2023(or 4?) Scotland’s consumption was 57% – Bearing in mind that this is WITH curtailment mainly due to grid capacity issues, it would be reasonable to estimate Scotland’s consumption would be well below 50% were their no hindrance, and shrinking as further resources come on stream.

    As commented earlier, battery bank expansion is a huge step change in how the grid operates, but the way energy is stored is growing, eg pumped storage expansion and even a ‘liquid air’ plant at Hunterston IIRC..

    Scots may not have been so clued up during the oil and gas boom (pun unintended) but despite the same sort of clampdown from HMG over energy, information is more readily leaking out these days and young Scots are much more aware…

    It possibly hasn’t dawned on them what the potential value is to an independent Scotland, something the SNP should seriously consider making a talking point given the times we are in…

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I see that the ‘Scotland Channel’ via Youtube has a news article about Scotland being ripped off by England. In the comments are some Britnats who really really try to tout the lie that Scotland is just too poor and would never be allowed into the EU because of the ‘deficit’ that we know Scotland would not have, due to the EngGov banning Scotland from even borrowing a penny.
      Let’s hope many more people wake up to the lies because the ‘too poor’ lie will be ratcheted up by the Brit/Eng state, in the next few months.

      Liked by 1 person

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