Jeremy Leggett: Seas of plenty?

A BBC documentary implied that Scotland has plenty of oil and gas in reserve. It should never have been screened.

The peak-oil debate is a high-stakes game. In an economy as oil-addicted as ours, we cannot afford to bet that oil supply will continue to meet demand and be wrong.

This week, BBC Scotland produced a classic example of how the media has (mostly) failed to serve the debate well thus far. In a one-hour TV documentary, Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland, BBC business correspondent Hayley Millar managed never once to mention that oil production in the North Sea peaked nine years ago and has fallen steeply ever since.



The impression the film sought to give was that there is still plenty of oil offshore, and that the technical advances the oil industry has made since production began in 1979 mean a thriving future for the industry. Viewers would have come away with the impression that plentiful oil supplies are available to Scotland for decades into the future. The headline on the BBC News website reinforces that impression. It reads: “Oil price rise brings industry boom”. The long website article by Millar, like the TV programme, does not bring up the fact that North Sea oil has long since peaked, much less that current oil production is almost half the production achieved at the peak in 1999.

“The more I’ve investigated, the more lies I’ve laid to rest”, said Millar, wrapping up the programme. One lie, presumably, was my prediction