Early last April, Bank of Scotland released a survey of 100 companies in the oil and gas industry.
In those spring days, the talk was of 39,000 jobs being created over two years and of international expansion. If firms had a problem, it was a skills shortage. Back then, Brent crude futures contracts were trading at $107; yesterday, the barrel price was $64.88.
When the collapse began, George Osborne acquired the habit of saying it was good news for consumers. The Chancellor was right, but only up to a point. The United Kingdom industry, centred on the North Sea, is also an employer of fundamental importance to Scotland and to the wider country. Even its diminished tax revenues still count for something on the Treasury's books.
Before falling prices began to lay waste to jobs and investment plans, Oil & Gas UK estimated that 440,000 people depended directly or indirectly on the industry for their livelihoods. Scotland's share was reckoned to be 45 per cent of the total. If there is a crisis now, the economic and human consequences are of a scale that demands responses from governments in London and Edinburgh.
The 22nd Oil and Gas Survey from Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce should set alarm bells ringing in Holyrood and Westminster. Sixty seven per cent of operators have been forced to cancel projects. Confidence and activity levels are at historically low levels. Seventy per cent of firms surveyed have seen the value of exploration fall. Barely one in five contractors is working at or above "optimum" levels.
Investment intentions are meanwhile cautious, at best. There is a diminishing degree of confidence in "international activities". Decommissioning work provides relief but that is, of itself, the mark of an industry in difficulties. The picture is gloomy.
Mr Osborne would no doubt respond that he was alert to problems and acted accordingly. Once again, the Chancellor is partly right. The £1.3 billion package announced in his Budget was welcomed, but it came only after intense lobbying from the industry and the Scottish National Party administration in Edinburgh. It was a remedy, in any case, for problems caused by one Mr Osborne.
In March, he cut petroleum revenue tax from 50 per cent to 35 per cent and reduced supplementary corporation tax from 30 per cent to 20 per cent. This was the same Chancellor, however, who had helped himself to a £2bn windfall in 2011 by raising the latter tax from 20 per cent to 32 per cent (later reduced to 30 per cent). Between 2011 and 2013 production fell sharply and new exploration slowed almost to a halt. Tax revenues of £10.9bn in 2011/12 were down to £4.7bn in 2013/14.
Clearly, a collapsing price has been paramount. It can be argued, nevertheless, that in his Budget Mr Osborne was repairing damage for which he was responsible. Since his petroleum revenue tax cut does not take effect until next year, there is good reason to say he should be doing more, and doing it now, if issues raised by the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber are to be addressed.
Things move fast in the energy industry, as the fall in prices reminded us. Chancellors who preach the need for stability and certainty must also be quick off the mark.
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