Did Blair move the border and steal Scotland’s Oil?

A quite remarkable meme on social media is the concept that Tony Blair stole some of Scotland’s oil just before devolution to screw the country over. It’s a classic piece of disinformation, implying something that does not exist based on a factual piece of information.

Here’s the claim, which is usually augmented by a line that Westminster stole all the oil in this move:

Okay, so let’s start with the facts:

In 1987, the Civil Jurisdiction (Offshore Activities) Order 1987 defined the border between Scotland and England at sea for civil law. This border kinked northwards from Berwick, within the territorial waters of the UK (13.8 miles out from the land), and then essentially ran parallel out to the end of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the UK (extending out 200 nautical miles from the land). So that’s the yellow line and is only in respect of civil disputes in offshore activity.

In 1999, with devolution approaching, Scotland was set to take over the regulation of fishing from the UK. This was an international obligation due to the Common Fisheries Policy, so it was believed that a boundary that would be more reflective of an international boundary between two states would be applicable. Therefore, the median line approach was used. This is the point of drawing the line so it marks the point that is of equal distance from the land of each territory (in this case Scotland and England) as demonstrated here.

This approach is the starting line for defining an international boundary between two states, and is a good proxy for an international boundary.

This is the red line, as noted above. As you can see, it lies much further north of the original boundary and, therefore, it’s here that the nat meme bases its claim that Blair stole the oil fields contained when the border “shifted”.

The new fishing border was set out in the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999.

This order had two effects: firstly to define Scotland for devolution purposes within the (13.8 mile) territorial waters (this was the same as the 1987 border) and to define the border for fishing in the EEZ, and it was here that the median line approach was used.

So, where is the reference to oil in the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundary Order?

There isn’t one, so how can anyone claim that oil was stolen? Indeed, as a reserved issue, oil had no application to the fishing boundary, which confirmed by the government at the time.http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1999/mar/23/scottish-adjacent-waters-boundaries

So, who applies the fishing boundary to oil? Well the Scottish Government through GERS (and this was later mirrored by HMRC when they later produced their hypothecation of Scottish tax revenue).

It’s worth making it clear that the Scottish Government are free to choose (or change at any time) the border used for geographic allocation of oil between Scotland and England. However, in their wisdom they have used the accurate median line approach and this is agreed by HMRC in their own independent analysis of the hypothecation of taxation.

So, did the UK government move the border for oil? No, not at all. The border didn’t even move. Scotland simply has two borders between the outside of our territorial waters and up to the EEZ. One for fishing and another for civil jurisdiction, which a cursory glance at the Scottish Government website would tell you.

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/marine/seamanagement/national/seaarea