I read through that article on the Infrastructure Bill – read it. Very interesting and scary, certainly for our English cousins in the first place. More difficult to expedite that in Scotland, but then impossible just means a little harder? If you’re a cynic!
I have a theory, actually more of a belief. I actually believe Westminster knows that Scotland will get a YES vote in the referendum – I believe Westminster are pretty well convinced of that. After YES, there will be a period of negotiation – that will go on for a very long time, I suspect at least 10 years – by that time we will be in our, well, a lot older. Westminster will drag their heels and probably everything else.
Sorting out the oil will be a very lengthy process – not least of all because we need to reverse the 1999 coastal grab when Blair/Brown partitioned 6000 square miles of North Sea waters securing around 15% of our scoosh. Westminster will drag everything out to the very last minute – even though the final outcome is inevitable.
Once the oil and gas reserves are transferred to Scotland, besides everything else, that is enough to push UKplc into insolvency. At the moment they only just make the payments on their budget deficit – which is just OPEX (day to day operational expenditure). Losing the oil and gas revenue will deck them, and they know that. Chapter 11 &1/2 if you will.
Of course Westminster does have access to their own reserves of oil and gas via fracking. They are faced with a simple choice; fracking or insolvency. Of course everything is run on the never/never anyway so as long as they have control of all the ‘fracking levers’ they can account for that as a liquid asset (shocking pun).
Of course, one of the key levers they must have to convince the world’s bankers has to be the Infrastructure Bill. If they did not have that then every man and his dug would fight the government with everything they have to deter fracking.
Did I ever say? Some scientist somewhere came up with the concept of drilling and hydaulicing the bedrock to extract oil and gas. Once it was a proven technology they had to give it a name. What about … ‘Compressing’? ‘Hydraulicing’? ‘Pressurising’? Someone probably shouted out from the back of the hall – what about ‘Fracking’? When you need him, where was the guy who says ‘are you off your f*ckin nut? fracking? So Fracking it was.
So there you have it, fracking is Westminster’s contingency plan when they eventually lose Scotland’s oil and the Infrastructure Bill is just a vital first step.
By the way, there is no way they landed on the moon!
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