Scottish Territorial Waters and North Sea Oil Share

Rough Example of Boundaries

There has long been an argument from Scotland that the majority of the North Sea Oil is theirs. In fact the SNP first used the slogan "It's Scotland's oil" back in the mid to late 1970’s when they first attempted to gain Scottish independence.

There is still huge debate about what would be classed as Scottish territorial waters should Scotland gain independence, something that would heavily influence the North Sea oil share they would get. Some say however that the territorial waters are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to North Sea oil for two reasons, which are:

•    The Oil companies tend to have a London based head office so would still be paying UK tax
•    Historically the UK government has been heavily involved in subsidies and grants to support North Sea Oil development which they are unlikely to simply let go off.

Whilst the above is true, I am digressing so let’s get back to the main debate of Scottish territorial waters.

SNP claims that 90% of North Sea oil and gas would sit in Scottish waters after independence and this has heavily been claimed for its economic plans. This would be worth around £6 billion to £12 billion per financial year to the Scottish treasury.

In total (as of 2007) the UK had 590 oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, a large number of the gas platforms sit off the East Anglia coast, but the oil platforms sit further north.

Now the reason the waters are muddied on this subject (sorry I can’t help my puns) is that this percentage greatly depends on the trajectory of the territorial waters at the England/Scotland border.

Currently maritime law is governed by Scots Law in the north and English Law in the south. The Continental Shelf Act 1964 and the Continental Shelf (Jurisdiction) Order 1968 defines this as being at the 55th parallel north on the map. Under the 55th parallel north, Scotland would have the 90% stake which they claim.

Unfortunately territorial waters are not simply defined by longitude and latitude parallels and are genuinely done so through an extension of the continental shelf of the land mass. An example of this is the recent territorial claims the US, Russia, Canada and other countries are laying on areas of the Arctic as part of their continental shelves...again for gas/oil reasons.

Territorial waters are set under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea III and this governs the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) a country has over the resources in the sea for its own use. Generally the EEZ is set at 200 nautical miles from the coast of a country, or further if it’s proved the continental shelf extends past that point.

Based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) it could be said that as the land border of Scotland and England has a north eastern trajectory at Berwick, the majority of the North Sea Oil would therefore sit under the UK and not be part of Scottish territorial waters.

There has not been any concrete conversation and agreement on the territorial claims of Scotland to neither agree nor deny the waters they claim. What we do know is that the waters would amount to around 60% of the total UK maritime waters, a colossal 500,000 square kilometres. It will be interesting to see how conversations occur around Scottish territorial waters as I imagine the UK won’t want to budge and give too much away based on financial revenues from water, whilst Scotland will want as much as they can get to encompass as much of the oil platforms as possible.

Both sides will have a point around where the water boundaries lay, but it’s not going to be straight forward and looking at it I cannot conclusively say what the boundary should be.