Why Scotland needs an oil fund

Scotland is the only country in the world to have discovered oil and not benefited from it directly.

The Norwegians prudently ploughed oil revenues into an oil fund which became part of a sovereign wealth fund now worth £186bn.

The US state of Alaska also has an oil fund so does the province of Alberta in Canada.

And that's what the SNP wants for Scotland.

Even if Scotland got a percentage share of the windfall gain, we can make a start on building up an investment fund to power the Scottish economy in the future.

The last 30 years have come and gone - there's nothing we can do about that.

The beauty of the current situation is that there is more value left in the waters around Scotland than even what has been extracted to date.

There might be slightly less in volume terms, although perhaps not much less, but in value terms there's much, much more.

So it's not too late if we act now, decisively and politically, to put ourselves in the same secure position as other major oil producers.

The Norwegian Oil fund was started only 12 years ago and is now worth £186 billion, the Alaskan oil fund is worth £19 billion and the Alberta Oil fund worth nearly £9 billion.

This is the moment when we must start an oil fund.

Scotland may have missed the opportunity to invest the last 30 years of oil wealth for our future but we should not miss this new opportunity.