Is it really Scotland's oil...?

When bloggers head up a post with a question it's usually rhetorical and signals a personal rant but I'm really asking this time - can any of our readers provide some background or research on how this question might be resolved? Although 'Scotland's Oil' is a neat slogan I assume there more to it than that and that nationalist have identified some precedent / legal conventions that validate the notion that, post-independence, UK oil fields (which is presumably how they would be classed at the moment) will become Scottish?

I ask because even political opponents of independence tend to accept it as a given and frame their objections from a different angle but it's always struck me as a highly questionable assumption. Since all the R&D, infrastructure, distribution channels etc. have obviously been established under a UK banner the notion that Scotland has a particular claim on this resource seems curious. I can see little other basis for it than sheer physical proximity but that would no more legitimise Scottish ownership than it would Aberdeen ceding from an independent Scotland and saying it's actually their oil, then the harbour pub ceding from Aberdeen saying.....you get the picture.

Any ideas...?

Comments

[Alex Duffy]

This article will provide the precedents for the deliniation of the sea around an independent Scotland. http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol12/No1/120077.pdf

As for the financing of the R&D of the North Sea fields that was a risk bourne by the companies and not by the UK government.

[Colin Campbell]

I think the question was answered by the previous post. It appears that Scotland gets back approximately the value of additional North Sea Oil Revenues in additional revenue. I think that this argument is more emotional than realistic. The time to do this was 20 years ago, when there really was a revenue stream to build the required investment in the future, rather like the Republic of Ireland with all the EEC development money and overseas investment. The bird has flown now.