January 20: Profits in pipeline for oil giants, glut or no glut

IT is strange how the price of petroleum seems to defy the basic law of economics whereby when an essential support to our daily lives, e.g. food, heating, and travel, increases in price we 
tend wherever possible to use less and when the price goes down we tend to be tempted to use more.

The reduction in the price of oil appears to be a disaster for the producers who immediately begin to get rid of staff and ask the Government for a reduction in the tax on petroleum.

If they succeed, they will continue to make huge profits when the price of their product goes up and even more profits when the price goes down.

From: Terry Barry, Arncliffe Gardens, Batley.

THE Scottish National Party (SNP), prior to the independence vote, made a song and dance about the oil in the North Sea belonging to Scotland. Now that the price of oil has fallen dramatically they have come back to the English government to bail them out.

So we find it is still their oil but the debt belongs to England now. Alistair Darling forecasted this result would happen.

So where would Scotland have been if they had voted for independence?