• Text size
  • Send this article to a friend
  • Print this article

Battle royal for Scotland’s offshore energy bonanza

Of all the policy initiatives launched by First Minister Alex Salmond since he was returned triumphantly to power last month, none has been better politics than his assault on Scotland's most powerful and most disliked absentee landlord, the Crown Estate Commission (CEC).

If the CEC’s role was confined to the management of its more conventional properties, such as the 57,000-acre Glenlivet Estate in Moray which the organisation bought in 1937, this role might be tolerable. What’s harder to accept, and what Mr Salmond is principally challenging, is the CEC’s control of our country’s seabed.