A WAR of words has erupted as Alex Salmond prepares to publish a report saying Scotland is set for an oil boom.
The First Minister will be in Aberdeen tomorrow to unveil the latest Scottish Government paper in the referendum campaign.
It will predict that North Sea oil production will be two million barrels per day by 2017, a rise of 30% on current levels.
It will claim that, despite the "boom", an independent Scotland would not be over-reliant on oil revenues.
The report comes days after the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) downgraded estimates of future tax revenues from the North Sea.
The OBR said oil and gas revenues would drop from 0.4% of the UK economy to just 0.03% by 2040.
It estimated total tax revenues from 2018/19 to 2040/41 as £56 billion, down £11bn compared with last year's prediction.
But Mr Salmond yesterday dismissed the OBR figures as "a fib".
Referring to former Labour chancellor's Denis Healey's recent admission that previous UK governments downplayed the value of North Sea oil, he said: "Westminster Government departments fib, as Denis Healey recently revealed.
"Now they are at it again. It's another part of Project Fear from the No campaign, which is being exposed on a daily basis."
Politicians from pro-UK parties dismissed the report.
Labour's shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran said: "Now Alex Salmond will have us believe that oil isn't an essential part of the Scottish economy. Yet it is this resource that he claims to be so vital that the EU and the rest of the UK would be begging to agree to any terms laid down by Alex Salmond after separation.
Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont said: "This is the second time the SNP has rushed out a rose-tinted oil report days after experts have crushed its separation dreams. It seems the Scottish Government is happy to accept OBR forecasts when it suits them, but questions the projections if it doesn't tie in with the independence fantasy."
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