HE is one of the most knowledgeable academics associated with the energy sector; his outspoken views on it take no prisoners and on Monday Professor Alex Russell will start a six-part series on the North Sea oil and gas industry.

Russell, the chair of the Oil Industry Finance Association, which sets standard oil accounting procedures for the sector, starts with what he describes as an alternative view of it, which he says is “based unashamedly on what past and future generations of Scots have lost by the way Scotland’s oil and gas wealth has been plundered, squandered and mismanaged by successive Tory and Labour Westminster governments”.

Not everyone will agree with his candid views about “Scotland’s oil”, but they won’t be able to ignore them.

Russell asks if deceit, or covert mis-selling “on a nuclear scale” was behind the government’s stance against an independent Scotland back in 1974, when a secret report — its contents destroyed any counter-claims Westminster might make against the economic case for an independent Scotland.

“This paper has shown that the advent of North Sea oil has completely overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish nationalism.

“An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time into the future.”

Russell moves from oil’s earliest days, through the 1980s when Westminster selling off of state-owned oil companies and handing control of them and the oilfields to multinationals, “simply beggars belief”.

He contrasts that approach with that of Norway, which now has an oil found worth £1 trillion from roughly the same level of resources.

Fracking also comes under fire from the sharp-tongued Russell: Fracking started with experimenting with dropping torpedoes down well shafts, compressing them with water and detonating them to blast access to oil. It then “progressed” to involve the forcing of water mixed with napalm into shale and then, believe it or not, climaxed through testing the extra output from two nuclear explosions on oil and gas plays.”

He goes on to ponder: “On economic grounds alone, why on Earth would Scotland contemplate for more than 10 seconds the clear imperative of banning fracking in the most beautiful part of the current UK?”

Another in his series looks at decommissioning and where it has all gone wrong and, in the last of his six articles, Russell considers a “nuclear nightmare and the categorical imperative to focus on renewables”.

Read Professor Alex Russell only in The National, starting on Monday.