Oil running out!

[Innes Newton]

This is old news from 1999 but it shows you have a short memory

In the period from 1985 to 1988, when the rest of the country enjoyed the so-called "Lawson boom", the oil industry was in the doldrums and house prices were falling in Aberdeen by 10 per cent a year. "People were so desperate they just handed in their keys at the bank and said, `Do your best,'" Mr Shepherd recalled.

By the early 1990s, however, the Granite City was famed for the number of well-heeled women, the wives of oil workers, to be seen shopping in Calvin Klein on Union Street, or jetting on shopping trips to the big New York department stores. Now, as the future looks rosy for the rest of the UK, a quarter of the area's oil and gas jobs could go in a decade, says the councils' report, leaving just 30,000 employed in the industry compared with 54,000 in 1991.

The prediction follows other indicators of trouble in Aberdeen: the town has Scotland's highest burglary rate, and air passenger numbers have fallen by 9 per cent in the past year, while the rest of Scotland has seen an air- travel boom.

The immediate cause is last year's slump in world oil prices, which also explains the announcement this week by Kvaerner, the engineering giant, to cut 3,000 jobs worldwide in its oil and gas divisions.

More than 2,000 oil jobs have disappeared in Scotland's offshore industry already this year. Marathon Oil cut more than 500 jobs in May while another 100 went from Noble Drilling, and 80 at Amec Process and Energy. However, given that oil prices have recovered from their December low of $10 a barrel, and doubled since the beginning of the year, yesterday's predictions reflect a more fundamental restructuring and scaling down of the industry

The conditions are different now, but the investment in oil in Aberdeen in relative terms was massive at the start of the oil boom and then it went downhill and stagnated for quite a while. Today the threat is from new, cheaper sources of energy, which risk killing off North Sea Oil. Oil companies can make losses too, massive ones indeed. They are in a relatively high risk industry. They can make big profits but sometimes things go against them. If they need to they just walk away from the market, move their gear and the staff they need and leave a ghost town.

[NickB]

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You can't have it both ways Innes.

Either oil revenues can be predicted in advance or the OBR and the Westminster government are lying through their teeth.

Which is it ?

[Innes Newton]

Oil revenues canNOT be predicted in advance. End of. And if they can't be predicted Indepemdent Scotland and the Yes Campaign have a major problem. They say it is worth a trillion pounds/dollars...whatever. They cannot say that.

[NickB]

Oil revenues canNOT be predicted in advance. End of.

Well, if they can't be predicted why are you saying that oil will become worthless in the near future?

Sounds a bit like a prediction to me.

Every other country that has oil reserves seems to find them to be a bonus, not a handicap.

In what way is Scotland different from every other country in the world that has oil reserves ?

[Innes Newton]

why are you saying that oil will become worthless in the near future?

Did I? Or did I say it could become worthless if it became much more expensive than other sources? Once again you try to misrepresent the truth of what I said, a common disease of the Yes Campaign

Every other country that has oil reserves seems to find them to be a bonus, not a handicap

Do they? How many countries are there with oil and mineral deposits where they are not extracted purely because it is not economically viable (..such as with coal in the UK)?

North Sea oil is different to so may other sources. It IS more difficult and it IS more expensive to extract than most other major oil fields. That's what makes it different. And that is why its future is more at risk

[NickB]

North Sea oil is different to so may other sources. It IS more difficult and it IS more expensive to extract than most other major oil fields. That's what makes it different. And that is why its future is more at risk

How, precisely, is it different to Norway's oil, which sits just the other side of the N. Sea median line ?

Strange how a country smaller than Scotland and more oil and gas dependent than Scotland has handled its resources infinitely better than the 'broad shouldered' UK.

The North Sea's problems include an outdated regulatory and licensing system, an unstable tax regime and a lack of attention generally from successive UK governments. There have been 16 tax changes in the North Sea in 10 years and 14 oil ministers in 17 years.

[Innes Newton]

Yes Norway has a problem too. Don't you know their oil production is plummeting too?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-0 ... rrels.html

[NickB]

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Industry experts condemn Westminster handling of Oil and Gas sector

[Innes Newton]

Money doesn't grow on trees. There's a deficit to be paid off don't you know?

[NickB]

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What could Scottish independence mean for oil and gas

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LTp0Q3bZZ_A[/youtube]