Scotland has ignored oil opportunities

Your Letters (Herald) January 03 2007

In 1974 I went to the Middle East to work as a civil engineer. I had been a lecturer at Strathclyde University, and had actively supported the SNP. I authored the 1972 booklet, The Reality of Scotland's Oil, which drew attention to the potential benefits that an independent Scotland could expect from the great oil wealth discovered in the North Sea. Of course this booklet, and the SNP's own well-researched economic claims in their It's Scotland's Oil campaign, were roundly rubbished by the unionist press (including The Glasgow Herald).

We now know that even in the 1970s our unionist politicians knew the truth of the SNP's claims but were determined to hide this from voters.

In 1975, the Middle East was a fairly undeveloped area with little in the way of infrastructure and services. That is why I, and thousands of other British engineers, were going there. The region's oil wealth had risen greatly in value after the 1973 Arab/Israeli war, and this was now being invested frantically in the construction of roads, ports, water and drainage schemes, power stations, desalination plants, hospitals, schools and universities. Later, it became luxury hotels, shopping malls, apartment blocks, libraries and museums, business parks and theme parks; now even the world's tallest building. The tangible fruits of their oil wealth are there for all to see. Their worldwide investment portfolios are even more impressive. Millions of people now go to the Gulf countries on holiday and are no doubt astonished at what they find in cities such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha and Bahrain. Not as astonished as I am, since I first saw all these places in the 1970s.

In all this, where stands Scotland, itself a major oil producer for 30 years? World oil production is around 0.6 tons/year/head of world population. The figure for the US has averaged 1.2 tons/year/head. But the vast majority of countries are at nil or less than 1.0.Over the past 10 years (and for a good number of years before that) Scotland has produced an average of around 20 tons of oil/year/head of population. For comparison, let us look at the mega-rich Arab Gulf countries. For Kuwait and the UAE, the figure is around 55; for Saudi Arabia, it is 23. The Norwegian figure is way up there with the big boys at around 30 tons/year/head, which helps explain how they have managed to build up a heritage fund in excess of £100bn for future generations, while still being now Europe's most prosperous country. So you can see that Scotland has been (in oil production terms at least) in the big league.

So where has Scotland gone wrong? Why are we the only country in the world whose population has stayed static for the past 50 years while the world's population has soared from 2.5 billion to 6 billion? Why have we had, at 1.8%, the lowest average GDP growth in western Europe over the past 30 years? Why is it that, of all the countries of western Europe, only in Scotland is male life expectancy still below 70 years? It is the same with indicators such as the percentage of people either unemployed or not in employment through incapacity, our car ownership rate and other measures of economic wellbeing.

All that oil wealth we produced, oil wealth that transformed the Gulf countries and Norway, has simply passed us by. We even suffer the annual indignity of being taunted by our unionist leaders about how much we are indebted to a subsidy from England for our very survival as one of western Europe's poorest countries. I used to think that there was something wrong with Scottish voters that so many could be so easily fooled and deceived, election after election, especially by the Labour Party. But at least they had an excuse – like those who voted for the war in Iraq. I now see that the real "dummies" in Scotland have been our own business and commercial people.

They have, for 30 years, totally failed to see the economic opportunities that would have arisen in an independent oil-rich Scotland. A trip to the Middle East would soon put them right. The economic opportunities, and the best oil-related jobs, were snapped up by London and the south-east, where control of our industry lay, and they didn't notice.

Scotland still has a lot of oil left to be produced and it has become very, very valuable. In this coming year, "energy security" will come to be recognised as an important quality for a country to have. Scotland will have that in spades. Perhaps in 2007 our business leaders, and even the voters, will finally get the message.

Nick Dekker, 1 Nairn Way, Cumbernauld.