True. Essentially it was so the moment the fund idea was not successful. Benn was a politician I respected enormously. I didn't often agree with him, although on this I did, but he had rare integrity for a politician.
"Even though the U.K. extracted nine per cent more oil and gas by 2011, they collected $156 billion less in petroleum taxes and royalties than the Norwegians"
Interesting link, closing sentence says it all really.
The major difference between how Norwegian citizens have benefited from oil extraction and how British citizens have benefited from it is still less a matter of policy differences and more a matter of oil extraction per capita though
$156 billion sounds huge until you divide it by a population averaging 60 million and make it accrue over 40 years.
Such is national scale finance. We can cut it up to sound worthless, or make it sound like a fair chunk of change. Would have bought a lot of infrastructure or regional development.
Perhaps most relevant to today, it's 1/8 the national debt.
That's quite a lot to just leave on the table. Per capita? That's where the Scots, especially SNP, angle starts. They do have a similar population to Norway after all...
"Even though the U.K. extracted nine per cent more oil and gas by 2011, they collected $156 billion less in petroleum taxes and royalties than the Norwegians"
Interesting link, closing sentence says it all really.