Zero Emission Scotland

The Forties Pipeline System (FPS) This is the pipeline system that carries most of the oil from the North Sea to the UK. It collects the oil from 85 different North Sea oilfields, and flows around 550,000 barrels of oil per day back to the UK mainland. For context, in total the North Sea has around 400 offshore platforms between the UK and Norway, producing and exporting both oil and gas. FPS is a British oil pipeline system. Exploration drilling for North Sea oil is currently banned on the UK Continental Shelf. It has been since the current government came to power. As a result of the drilling ban, the Forties Pipeline System is currently uninvestable according to its owner INEOS. They haven’t invested in its upkeep for 2 years. INEOS have said the pipeline will close by 2035, but without investment maybe as early as 2030, which is now just 3.5 years away. 550,000 barrels / day is equivalent to 38.96 GW of primary energy. This is 10x more energy than the UK’s new Hinkley Point C nuclear power project, which is projected to cost £48 billion for 3.2GW of electrical power. Electrical energy is joule for joule more valuable than chemical energy, but the comparison of scale is real. 38.9 GW is more energy than the entire National Grid carries. The largest energy system in the UK is not the grid it is this underwater pipeline system. With drilling banned, and the North Sea entering a period of forced closure, the Forties Pipeline System is going to close in the not too distant future. Once the pipeline is no longer economical, the entire Central North Sea oil production will collapse with it. This isn’t something that closes down gracefully, the entire Central North Sea basin reaches market through a single pipe. BP recently announced they are selling up their remaining assets and getting out, Exxon, Chevron, etc are all already long gone. Nobody wants their brand near this collapse. The tax rate is 78%, the government wants this national infrastructure to shut down. It will. The German Chancellor recently called their nuclear fleet closure a “Strategic Blunder”, interesting choice of words. But I think it was obviously a blunder to anyone outside their propaganda bubble. Likewise the UK’s North Sea. The German nuclear fleet averaged 10.3 GW of primary energy output over its operational life, which is around 1/4 the primary energy of the Forties Pipeline System. The UK has a few other pipeline systems but this one is by far the largest and the most critical. Now this infrastructure, isn’t supposed to last forever. But when it goes you should have a plan. In the UK nobody talks about this. It’s taboo. A lot of people think “yeah but they won’t let that happen”… well it happened in Germany, and it happened in Japan. A lot of people want it to happen, and a lot of those people are in politics. So what replaces this? Nothing? Is the UK just going to go silently into the night?

North Sea Oil - Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 I have been doing more research into the decommissioning cost of the oil fields and associated tax breaks for oil field owners and future tax revenue into the treasury. Much of the figures are ‘speculative’ and based upon best estimates. I do-not believe the UK Government and the Scottish Government have a clear understanding of what is over the horizon I believe there will be vast cost increases in the decommissioning resulting in more tax breaks applied in turn reducing monies into the treasuries receipts. Ultimately this will be passed on to the citizens in reduce budget spend. Scotland’s £5billion black hole will get bigger as there will be cuts passed on from Westminster to Scotland. All political parties should be pro opening up our oil fields now. The Net Zero dream has not materialised at ‘PACE’ as promised. It is madness to set targets of 2045 Scotland and 2050 UK when India has set a target of 2070 who have a huge population hence more omissions. We are a side show in this game where politicians are putting their pipe dreams before our peoples energy and economic security. The governments are killing off our workers and SME supply chains. SNP , Labour you need to change now your policies. SNP you were the cheerleaders for it is our oil during 2014. What happened to people first politics second🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿