IAN Lakin (Letters, November 20) takes us back to the oil debate, suggesting there has been only a “partial recovery in oil prices”, when in fact Brent Crude got to $86 a barrel last month, before falling back to today’s price of $66 – the former being almost three times its price at its nadir, and the latter still more than twice that. Partial recovery? Really? While it would be wrong not to acknowledge variations around the trend, it is clearly upwards.

Mr Lakin’s comments are like those of many economists who, according to Andy Critchlow, head of Energy News at EMEA at S&P Global Platts, “often derided [oil] as an insignificant and declining industry”. However, the Oil and Gas Authority, according to Mr Critchlow, has identified 5.5 billion barrels of oil still to be extracted from UK waters which would be enough on its own to keep the industry going for another 20 years, and it estimates there are another 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent discoveries and undeveloped resources. Some decline.

In fact, Mr Critchlow suggests that “oil is Britain’s thin red line against a hard Brexit”, claiming that, “if Britain is to succeed outside the EU and to strike lucrative trade deal with Asia’s biggest economies North Sea oil could be a useful bargaining chip”. However, the same Mr Critchlow was one of the sources of reports in 2014 that oil would be bad for an independent Scotland. Yet four years later and facing the possibility of a hard Brexit, suddenly oil is good for the UK?

Indeed, it is so important to the UK that Mr Critchlow encourages us to “think of what the UK would be like without the vast wealth generated by the 44bn barrels of oil pumped from British territory over the last 40 years”. Yes, let’s do that Mr Critchlow, by considering Gavin McCrone’s report on North Sea oil. This was written at the beginning of those 40 years, but only unearthed from HMG using Freedom of Information. Professor McCrone suggests that an independent Scotland would have tended “to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner”.

Essentially, therefore, as Denis Healey confessed in 2013, the value of oil, for we Scots, was “underplayed because of the threat of nationalism”. Prof McCrone observes as much when he says the much-derided SNP estimates of the value of oil to Scotland at the time were actually much too low.

Mr Lakin’s argument that there has only been a partial recovery in price is therefore nothing new. The price trend is clearly upwards and now stands at about two- thirds of what it was at the beginning of this decade. Nor is it a declining asset as the Oil and Gas Authority confirms 20 years of known production with another 80 years possible. We have all been here before – “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Alasdair Galloway,

14 Silverton Avenue, Dumbarton.

JIM Coley (Letters, November 21) seems blind to the fact that our First Minister is providing leadership on Brexit and the SNP consistent opposition at Westminster when there is none from Jeremy Corbyn and Labour.

Labour’s annual conference backed the People’s Vote but you wouldn’t know it listening to a Labour leadership that won’t call for a vote of no confidence in the Tory Government.

Labour had the chance to defeat the Government in Monday’s vote on a new clause to the Finance Bill regarding child poverty when the SNP and the DUP voted against the government but Jeremy Corbyn failed to turn up and once again Labour let the Tories off the hook.

Having been sold down the river on EU fishing rights to Scottish waters, the Scottish Tory MPs have been shown to be ineffectual and this week even voted against an SNP amendment to reinstate the £160 million of EU money the UK Government syphoned from Scottish farmers. David Mundell won’t be missed if he resigns but motherhood is no excuse for Ruth Davidson’s silence if she really cared about Scotland.

The choice is not Theresa May’s plan or no deal as Nicola Sturgeon’s proposal for a softer Norway-plus solution should command support from all those who think Brexit is bad for the UK and Scotland.

We should recognise that despite having a mandate for another referendum, Nicola Sturgeon is putting independence on hold in order to sort out Brexit and it must be devastating for opponents to learn that Spain will not veto an independent Scotland’s place in the EU (“UK will break up apart before Spain, says foreign minister”, The Herald, November 21).

Mary Thomas,

Watson Crescent, Edinburgh.

NICOLA Sturgeon was in her element in London yesterday, hobnobbing with national party leaders and announcing the formation of a “coalition of opposition” (“Sturgeon calls for alliance to defeat May’s withdrawal agreement”, The Herald, November 21). This is completely in keeping with the SNP’s preferred stance, as an opposition. Its perpetual opposition is to the UK and the British state.

We can see from the SNP’s lamentable conduct of government in Scotland that anything positive or constructive is beyond its understanding. The negative aspects of permanent opposition are what appeal to it and its nature as an agit prop campaigning party. All of this is to the detriment of Scotland and the Scottish people.

Jill Stephenson,

Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.