Actually I know that economically once the shut storms settles down Scotland at lowest better together predictions will be one of the g20. Hardly a piss poor nation

Funnily enough though Ian wood in his own report earlier this year announced the same figures for North Sea oil as the snp of around 24 billion barrels.

do you mean the same standard life who said theyd leave if scotland had a devolved parliament?
or the one saying their share price has tanked becasue of teh referendum.
this one


Share price chart - Standard Life plc

I promised I wouldn't turn this into a hamster wheel, ho hum! Anyway I just looked at that website and the quote was from March 2013 when they were going to "proceed with a two-year appraisal programme to look at the possibility of developing a third phase of the giant Clair field, west of the Shetland Islands.
The initial commitment involves a two year programme to drill five appraisal wells. This could increase to between eight and twelve wells, depending on results from these first wells. Drilling of the first well commenced recently."
It then goes on:
"The Clair field was originally discovered in 1977;
The Clair field is located 75 km west of Shetland and extends over an area of 220km2, in water depths of approximately 140m;
Total hydrocarbons initially in place across the entire field are estimated at around 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, although due to the highly complex and fractured nature of the reservoir, there has been considerable uncertainty as to how much of the oil can be recovered."

I was peripherally involved in O&G in 1980/81 based in the Shetlands controlling choppers to/from the rigs (Ninian was the biggie then). And we had the odd chopper go West to the drilling ships (not rigs, 140 metres was too deep), so there are considerable issues in deep water drilling and production.

Yet wee eck is still putting his fingers in his ears going "lalalala I can't hear you"

Perhaps the share price is so high because they have publicly stated their contingency in the event of a yes. Thereby increasing confidence in their continued, profitable, existence

I may have stumbled upon the answer to the yes campaigns unswerving, fixed grin, optimism Scottish Review:

Right

Oil and Gas reserves and Scotland.

lets get this out the way, yes its running out, its running out everywhere but we have some time left.

1st about 40 Billion barrels has been extracted since the North Sea was opened up.

Whats left
North Sea: Somewhere between 15-24 Billion barrels Ian Wood said earlier this year 24 Billion and then suddenly lost some and now says about 15. Most industry people believe a lot more than 15 and hope upto 24.
the variance in figures in common in the industry and varies depending on oil price, extraction costs and who needs a boost to their share price but these numbers are pretty solid.

West Coast of Scotland: Probably a lot, at least as much as left in the North Sea possibly much more. Its hard to say but since a lot of exploration was stopped due to trident there are huge areas with the right and well known geology that will probably hold oil but no exploration has been allowed yet.
Firths: Again who knows as exploration was prevented but again the geology is right.

In a nutshell. there is at least as much left as we have taken out.

So about half left. Not exactly a problem for a country which even by westminsters reckoning will get about 90% odd of the share. The west of Scotland will of course all be Scotlands as Rockall was put under scottish domain some time ago


And here is a copy and paste

"It would seem that there is little knowledge of or even awareness that Scotland has plenty of known Oil and Gas off the West coast and that its exploitation has already begun.

For context since extraction was started about 42 billion barrels has been exploited, so there is upto half that left.

Economic Report 2013 - Oil & Gas UK

What’s off the West Coast: official estimates are about 17-20% of all UK reserves of Oil and Gas.
Finding numbers is actually fairly hard but from here

The Real State of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Reserves |

and wider reading this extract is probably about right from a pessimistic point of view with the real number likely to be a lot lot higher.

“The estimates for Scottish Atlantic Margin oil reserves are given in millions of tonnes, and the estimates for gas reserves in the Scottish Atlantic Margin are given in billions of cubic metres (B.cu.m). The Scottish North Sea estimates are shown in brackets. The DECC estimates are banded into Lower, Central and Upper, and the writer has maintained this classification. For Scottish Atlantic Margin oil reserves, the lower estimate is 74 million tonnes (375), central estimate is 230 million tonnes (518), and the upper estimate is 572 million tonnes (700). For gas reserves in place in the Scottish Atlantic Margin, the lower estimate is 98 billion cubic metres (181), the central estimate is 193 billion cubic metres (264), and the upper estimate is 413 billion cubic metres (410). Note that the upper estimate for gas reserves in the Scotland Atlantic Margin exceeds the estimate for gas reserves remaining in the Scottish North Sea (413 versus 410 billion cubic metres). It is extremely likely that the differentials gap between estimates for oil and gas in the Scottish North Sea and the Scottish Atlantic Margin will widen in favour of the Scottish Atlantic Margin (that the Scottish Atlantic Margin oil and gas reserves will eventually considerably exceed those of the Scottish North Sea at the upper end of the estimates).”

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...urces_2014.pdf

This article is clearly biased but actually provides a good starting point.

The Real State of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Reserves |

““The biggest oil-field in the world lies to the west of Lewis, but would be very difficult to work (but not impossible) since it has been shattered and fragmented by ancient volcanic action. But it is there“.

Now obviously the veracity of that claim needs to be checked but given that we have known about west coast oil since the and very little exploration has been done it may well be true

. “Chris Baker, Energy Institute, London (January 2014) stated, “There are enormous reserves, proven and estimated, west of Shetland (Faroese-Shetland Basin) and the potential is for more to be discovered (bear in mind that Shetland is part of Scotland, and these “enormous“ oil and gas reserves are located in Scottish waters”

Some further links regarding current exploitation off the West coast,.

This is in no way complete but I’m out of time so cant compile anymore. Feel free to add to it.

Solan Field, Premier Oil, , due Q4 2014, 42 million barrels. The field has an estimated life of 20 years Solan - Premier Oil Annual Report and Financial Statements year to 31 December 2013

Rosebank: Chevron and others, The field is estimated to hold about 240 million barrels of oil equivalent. Chevron have spent $2 billion already on this filed but current oil prices make this field uneconomical and a decision will be made in 2014 or 2015 on when to start exploitation.
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf...kfactsheet.pdf

Clair Oilfield: an estimated 5,000 million barrels. Production from the Clair field commenced in February 2005 from the first phase facilities and has so far produced around 90 million barrels for BP. New Clair Ridge Jackets Safely Installed West Of Shetland | Press | BP Global

Laggan and Tormore are two gas and condensate fields situated about 125km north-west of the Shetland Islands: The total field reserves are estimated to exceed one trillion cubic feet of gas and condensates (about 230 million barrels of oil equivalent). Laggan-Tormore Project - Offshore Technology

Schiehallion: BP plus others: Total recoverable reserves are estimated at approximately 425 million barrels, been producing since 1998

Foinaven oilfield: operated by BP Exploration in partnership with Marathon Oil, Recoverable oil reserves of Foinaven are estimated to be between 250 and 600 million barrels, been producing since 1997 currently doing about 85,000 barrles a day Foinaven Oilfield - Offshore Technology

Lancaster, Hurricane Energy, maybe 200 + million barrels".


The media and amazingly Salmond have made no mention of west coast oil but it is there, well known about in the industry and no secret at all.


The Oil is not going to run out anytime soon and while it is still there it can provide a huge amount of stability to a new nation and with a little common sense could be used to fund that socialist utopia that so many think will happen. It in fact can but as we'd be late into the sovereign wealth game it will take another generation


And while I'm on the subject oil makes up about 15% of the Scottish economy, a large part but not an amount that makes the nation 100% dependent on it.

see below or any number of industry journals, websites etc. West Coast oil is alive and well. The technology is light years ahead from the 80's

or maybe because theyve already cried wolf a few times before

Shiva thanks for the links etc, lot of work there. I am still struggling because none of the deep water fields West of Shetland and the Western Isles are proven. What if there is diddly squat there? That is a rhetorical question.

this is very obvious and the yes campaign have run a brilliant political campaign. Its been a load of tosh but so has better together but in terms of playing the game yes have done an outstanding job to go from no hope to holy shit they might do it

"The SNP prides itself on the positivity of their election strategies but this only started before the 2007 election following a workshop with the Really Effective Development Company where, amongst other things, they learned about Martin Seligman's research on how it's the most optimistic candidate in American presidential elections who usually wins. According to Paul Hutcheon, the late SNP MSP Brian Adam revealed a bizarre strategy for ensuring candidates remained upbeat: 'We were all presented with a bag of pennies. Every time we said anything negative we had to put a penny in the middle of the table. This was to stop us saying negative things. It was a major change in approach'."


personally I dont care either way what someone votes. as long as those eligible do actually vote.

I do believe scotland is more than wealthy enough to survive alone, there is plenty of evidence to prove that case. That maybe wont support wee ecks utopia but then wee eck may not get elected ever again even if he wins a yes vote. If he does and they spend all the money then scotland will manage. as i said its hardly bloody sudan or drc and yet even they survive.

there will undoubtedly be a lot of tough years to start but most of the reckless promised spending will disappear before 2016 as nobody will want to promise what they know they cant deliver. But to suggest scotland simply cannot manage is ridiculous.

The question isnt can scotland manage (even westminster and cameron himslef are on record saying we can) its whether people want to try to.

I for one believe the idea that a government based in scotland voted for only by the inhabitants of scotland and answerable only to those scots with full control of all matters is merely the logical step in democracy.


The people of a democratic country voted for an 80 year old political party in a democratic election, enough of them voted for this party that it can democratically take leadership of its devolved parliament. That party then kept to its election pledge to hold a democratic referendum. The terms of this referendum were agreed to by both this devolved regional government and the democratically elected national government.

A democratic referendum vote is about to take place in a democratic country.

maybe ive lived in dictatorships too long but I ****ing love that. If Scotland cocks up it cocks up, It would take some doing to become a third world nation and if we end up as greece is it really so bad compared to so so many other countries.

But to have a fully representative accountable government now that's something.

YES they are. But not as many as might be.

The geology is right thats the 1st key point, what little testing has been done points in the right direction. Billions has been spent and keeps being spent there, these guys are not bad at finding oil and much better at finding stuff they can make a profit removing.

Hell when I was at uni in the early 90's reading geology in Aberdeen this shit was known about and was then just beyond cost effective.

the other thing I guarantee is that we as a world will not stop pulling oil out of the ground anytime soon. We might stop wasting it for fuel but so so many industries rely on oil from plastics to pharmaceuticals that the oil price long term will continue to rise as it runs out and as it rises we will find it more economical to remove the difficult stuff.
Even last week some news came out about the possibility of fracking the dead fields in the north sea to recover whats left. That could add more than a few billion barrels to the mix.

This would be nirvana.

As an aside, What if you had proof you were personally happy to believe that there was as much oil left as already taken out and possibly more.

Would it change your views on the viability of independence ?

note i say viability, youre clearly a unionist and I have no issue with that

no nirvana would be that those politicians weren't assholes.