SNP inflate North Sea Oil tax revenues

The Scottish government has been accused of trying to dupe voters by inflating claims about the value of North Sea oil and gas reserves by a staggering 50%.

SNP leader Alex Salmon claimed last year that the watery depths off Scotland were holding 24bn barrels of crude oil, worth £1trn. Yet in his New Year address, while Salmond clung to the 24bn figure, he upped his projection by 50% to £1.5 trillion.

But in a stinging attack in Holyrood on Wednesday, Scottish Conservative energy spokesman Mary Scanlon, said the First Minister was again trying to mislead the public to help his plans to wrench Scotland from the Union.

She said: ‘What we have here is the amount of oil in the North Sea still to be extracted remaining the same, and the price of oil falling over an 11-month period.

‘Yet the First Minister claims that that same resource which was worth £1 trillion is now worth £1.5 trillion.

‘This is the sort of misinformation that the people of Scotland do not want in the lead up to the referendum.

‘This is why the public are beginning to lose trust in what Alex Salmond says.

‘As it stands oil and gas revenues account for only around 0.7% of UK GDP - compared to 17.7% of Scottish GDP in 2010/11.

‘Any future volatility in this sector would be very challenging for a Scottish economy so dependent on this source of income.’

And SNP energy minister Fergus Ewing said yesterday that increasing the rate of recovery by just 1% would result in £22bn boost in tax revenue.

But he failed to mention over what timeframe. A Scottish government spokeswoman later admitted that the figure was derived from estimates of the tax take over the whole life of the wells, of around 40 years.

Finance committee member and Labour MSP Michael McMahon, said: ‘You always get the impression that the SNP are trying to mislead with these figures, as they like to only show one side of the picture, as they never like to consider the £30bn-£50bn in North Sea decommissioning costs that would be landed on an independent Scotland’s doorstep.’