The UK and Norway discovered oil at roughly the same time, and have extracted roughly the same total amount of oil and gas. Norway has a sovereign wealth fund amounting to $1.4 trillion. The UK, and consequently Scotland, has a sovereign wealth fund amounting to the square root of sod all.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/article...countries/
According to the Natural Resource Governance Institute, “The two countries have equivalent geology and a similar resource base – the North Sea Basin is effectively split down the middle between them. The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe. That the two countries should be so far apart in terms of their current prosperity comes down basically to the British spending their profits while the Norwegians saved theirs. In Aberdeen, the self-appointed oil capital of Europe, during the early 1990s recession a piece of graffiti appeared saying: “Dear God, give us another oil boom. Next time we won’t p*ss it up against the wall.”
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/article...countries/
According to the Natural Resource Governance Institute, “The two countries have equivalent geology and a similar resource base – the North Sea Basin is effectively split down the middle between them. The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe. That the two countries should be so far apart in terms of their current prosperity comes down basically to the British spending their profits while the Norwegians saved theirs. In Aberdeen, the self-appointed oil capital of Europe, during the early 1990s recession a piece of graffiti appeared saying: “Dear God, give us another oil boom. Next time we won’t p*ss it up against the wall.”
