Letters / Tangle of broken rigging
I have to agree with Stuart Hill’s letter (We are the main prize; SN, 06/04/14) particularly the part where he says:
“Both sides in the Scottish referendum debate want us to think we are part of Scotland, so that the issue of the oil can be kept under control. If we were allowed to know it’s our oil and nobody else can show otherwise, we might start to get too big for our boots.”
The problem for the SNP (as I see it) is that most of the North Sea oil is located well outside the 12-mile international limit that would be imposed and enforced if Scotland achieves independence in September.
Also, more importantly, the oil and gas from many of the existing (and now well-depleted) fields have to be tankered into port: whereas the oil and gas being extracted in the vicinity of Shetland for distribution doesn’t, due to it being delivered through a network of seabed pipework. I imagine that the pipework solutions and the oil and gas-extraction agreements that go with them have been put in place to avoid the problem of ownership and shipping disputes before it arises.
If Alex Salmond’s hidden intention is to claim Shetland’s developed oil throughput and other revenues as Scotland’s alone in order to fund an independent Scotland when Westminster support and British finance of his ‘Braveheart’-based Independence fantasy are summarily removed post-‘Yes’, we could well end up seeing Scotland getting the lion’s share of it, while Shetland is left with the scraps.
That would be an annoying outcome for Shetland, whatever the ultimate unexpected consequences of independence for Scotland might turn out to be. Even if only for this reason, I see the settlement of Shetland’s legal position as being of paramount importance – preferably long before the date of the Scottish independence referendum.
In short, Shetland needs to be able to assert itself and cut itself loose from the tangle of broken rigging that Scotland could well become, if its bid for independence drops the whole place in the meat-grinder in five months’ time.
The only other concern I have is that future oil revenues accruing to Shetland MUST be spent on infrastructure projects – roads, fixed links, fibre-optic broadband that links up every single dwelling in Shetland (and finally breaks BT’s de-facto monopoly of telecoms in the process), genuine energy-generation and cogeneration projects that have shown themselves to work well and effectively at micro scale in harsh test environments – and not syphoned-off into private hands, or used to prop up sections of the existing infrastructure that have become effete and redundant, due to reduced levels of population and altered social requirements.
Philip Andrews
Unst
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