"Too much hanging on the oil"
THE YES campaign has been accused of exaggerating the amount of cash an independent Scotland could raise from North Sea oil revenues.
Scottish Labour Party candidate Mike Robb told a 150-strong audience at Inverness Town House the SNP was steering the country into "turbulent waters" with off-the-mark predictions about oil supplies.
He said the stocks left in the North Sea are now the hardest to get at and the most expensive to reach and the revenue that comes from it gets "lower and lower as the years go on".
"If those oil revenues are not as consistent as everybody seems to think they are we could be heading into some very turbulent waters," he said.
But Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the YES Campaign in Scotland, argued there was 50 year’s worth of oil and gas to be recovered. Mr Jenkins said an Independent government would do a better job at exploiting North Sea oil revenues and Scotland’s economy would receive a 20 per cent boost by taking control of oil supplies.
He told the audience at Thursday night’s event: "They say there’s 50 years left in the oil. So it will continue to be an enormous benefit to the country. Let’s use the 50 years that’s left to make a transition into a strong contributor to the EU economy. That strategy has worked well for Norway, where take-home pay is 60 per cent higher than in the UK."
Holyrood’s prediction for oil revenues in 2018 is twice Westminster’s estimates.
