Mr. Ewing, who will present the keynote address at DecomWorld's 10th Annual Decommissioning conference in December, also commented on how an independent Scotland would manage de-linking from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, and its approach to the possibility of reefing rigs and other issues governed by international conventions.
He reaffirmed that the Scottish National Party would uphold the UK’s commitment to providing tax relief, estimated to be worth £20bn between now and 2050, but said Scotland would press for contributions from the UK for the decommissioning bill because the UK had so far enjoyed £300bn in tax revenue from oil and gas in Scottish waters.

He seemed keenest to stress, however, that the industry would benefit from the much deeper engagement an independent Scotland could offer.

“I’m pleased that in the last couple of years the UK has taken a greater interest in the oil and gas industry in Scotland, but I think it’s reasonable to say, and it’s certainly a widely-held belief in Aberdeen, that in the previous decades there was not a sufficient and appropriate degree of interest,” said Mr Ewing.

“The key is we would have deeper and closer engagement. We do have that already, actually, with the industry in Aberdeen, and that of course is easier for us because Aberdeen is in Scotland and the UK government is mostly in London and we don’t see a great deal of energy ministers in Aberdeen.”

He added: “We would want to capitalise on that direct relationship with industry to tackle what are huge challenges because decommissioning is one word but it encapsulates a whole range of different processes and industrial and commercial activities, financial expertise, engineering expertise, storage of waste, the deployment of hugely expensive equipment.”

“There needs to be a wide debate about decommissioning again, and there should be a calm, rational debate about the practicalities of what decommissioning actually involves,” said Mr Ewing.

Asked how an independent Scotland would approach safety regulations and the de-linking from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, Mr Ewing said not much would change.

“We start off with an ‘as-is’ position,” he said. “We start off with the regulations as they are. The key is we would have deeper and closer engagement.”

An independent Scotland would approach the possibility of reefing platforms and other issues governed by international conventions in a similar way, he said.

“These are matters to be debated very closely,” he said. “First of all I should stress that Scotland is a country that wants to play a full and constructive part in international bodies. And we start off with the premise that we operate in accordance with international law and practice. And of course there is a corpus of law here, and I’m no expert in this area of the details of the law, but we want to look very closely at what our obligations are and we must fulfil them.”

A big industry concern at the moment, he said, was that the lack of investment and a clear industrial policy for decommissioning could drive the business – estimated to be worth more than £10bn in the next decade – away from Scotland and the UK as platforms and other infrastructure are dismantled and taken to Norway, the Netherlands and elsewhere to be processed onshore.

“The one comment I hear from industry more than any other is that it would be a tragedy if the UK taxpayer is to pay for decommissioning work to be done mostly in other parts of the globe,” he said.

“Plainly we have ports in Scotland, Peterhead, Lerwick and others where there is a considerable interest in carrying out decommissioning work. We would like the work to go there as far as possible rather than it all going to other countries.”

On the issue of tax he said an independent Scotland would impose no extra burden.

“We will continue to provide decommissioning relief in the manner and at the rate currently provided through the current North Sea fiscal regime,” he said, adding that industry estimates of approximately £1.5 trillion worth of oil and gas equivalent remaining in the North Sea would more than cover the revenue loss.

At the same time Mr Ewing said Scotland would press for the UK’s help in meeting the decommissioning bill, estimated to add up to approximately £31.5bn between now and 2040.

He said he was confident Scotland would get good results from the negotiations, which are expected to last 18 months if the referendum in September 2014 delivers a result in favour of independence.

That the UK has benefitted so substantially and for so long from North Sea oil and gas made the case quite straightforward, Mr Ewing said.

“We’ll move from the political arena into the practical arena of sorting out a series of matters which although in one sense are complex, on the other hand that are simple in principle because the UK has enjoyed £300bn in tax revenue which has come from the benefit of the installations,” he said.

If you're interested in the debate between Energy Ministers Fergus Ewing and Tom Greatrex (Shadow Energy Minister, Labour), you can see this for yourself at the 10th North Sea Decommissioning conference.

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