Energy and natural resources

The Scottish Government's own Expert Commission on Energy Regulation recommended keeping a single GB-wide wholesale electricity and gas market, with a new Scottish regulator working with National Grid's system operator under agreed governance arrangements. It opposed splitting the grid physically, saying this “would incur significant cost” and finding “no support in the industry, regulators or consumer bodies” for doing so.⁶ Independent legal analysis is more cautious about how automatic continued integration would be: Herbert Smith Freehills said in 2021 that keeping the market aligned would require Scotland and the rest of the UK “to agree to dynamically align standards, regulations and industry codes,” warning that “over time there would be increasing likelihood of divergence,” and that a shared regulator or system operator “would likely raise considerable challenges.”⁷ The detailed arrangements would be settled in negotiations after any vote for independence.

No single, agreed figure exists, but both production and revenue are expected to keep shrinking. The industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority, projects that 3.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent will be produced from the UK continental shelf between 2026 and 2050, against more than 47.7 billion barrels already produced by the end of 2024.⁸ On revenue, the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast (reflecting its November 2025 outlook) put UK-wide oil and gas tax revenues at £2.7 billion for 2025-26, and said receipts have “already started to drop” from their 2022-23 peak as prices and production fall.⁹ GERS, which measures things differently, put Scotland's geographical share of North Sea revenue at £3.2 billion in 2025-26, just 3.2% of Scotland's total revenue.¹ Both sets of figures are forecasts or estimates, not guarantees, and depend heavily on future oil and gas prices and on how many new licences are granted.