Oil Politics

It’s Election Day in the Islas Malvinas Falkland Islands. What a great day for democracy. Of course, I can’t really see the UK granting the weak pseduo-Crown Dependency Falklands government any real local power or veto, mainly because of of long-term economic strategy.

The real reason the UK was so eager to hang on to the Falklands is that as well controlling excellent Antarctic fishing grounds, it sits nicely on some underexploited, rather extensive oil deposits. Pending some developments in deep sea extraction technology, it’s estimated that the Falklands oil fields will be able to produce ~500K barrels per day. With a 3000 person population, that’s just over 150 barrels each per day, or around 61K barrels per person, per year. Were the Falklands to be independent, that would put it into UAE/Kuwait/Qatar status for sheer filthy lucre per inhabitant. Of course, neither the UK nor Argentina is likely to allow the Falklands to become independent and retain most of its oil wealth for itself.

I also find it unsurprising that only after Scotland’s North Sea oil flows have begun to dwindle has the UK’s Westminster government finally become somewhat willing to allow the Scots any measure of devolution and self-government.