OREANDA-NEWS. April 16, 2015. The UK’s Conservative party, running neck-to-neck in the polls with the Labour party ahead of the country’s May 7 general election, has released its 2015 manifesto. Among the commitments is a pledge to establish a shale gas wealth fund for the north of England.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, Tuesday launched his party’s plans should they win a new five-year term in power. The manifesto includes amongst its promises the creation of “a Sovereign Wealth Fund for the North of England, so that the shale gas resources of the North are used to invest in the future of the North.”

The idea of a sovereign wealth fund is modeled on countries like Norway, which has built up a Norwegian kroner 6,616 billion (\\$834 billion) investment fund from the country’s oil and gas revenues, designed to preserve part of the country’s petroleum wealth for the benefit of future generations.

The UK’s revenues from North Sea oil and gas were used largely to fund immediate public spending, allowing lower taxes throughout the 1980s and 1990s, rather than saved for a rainy day. But the north of England could now be home to a major shale gas industry, providing a second potential tax windfall, if the industry can achieve all its advocates claim.

Cuadrilla Resources, an onshore exploration company, said in 2011 that there were some 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas reserves in place in the Bowland shale in northwest England. That’s equal to about 5,700 Bcm, and producing just 10% of it, or 570 Bcm, would be equal to around seven years of the UK’s entire annual gas consumption.

The onshore oil and gas industry has already promised benefits to the immediate local population if shale gas operations go ahead: GBP100,000 (\\$148,000) per site to the immediate local community plus 1% of production revenues. A sovereign wealth fund would preserve some of the government’s tax take for the region too.

The question of who should benefit from oil and gas revenues is always complicated. The division of North Sea oil proceeds between Scotland and England was the subject of much debate last year ahead of the September 2014 independence referendum, in which Scotland ultimately decided to remain part of the UK.

But while much interest in the UK shale industry to date has focused on northern England’s shale gas, the Weald Basin in the south of England has potential for shale oil production, as the British Geological Survey reported in 2014. And there were claims this month of a massive oil find, which might even be produced without fracking, under southern England’s Gatwick airport.

If Scotland claims the North Sea oil, and northern England a shale gas wealth fund, could the next promise to come be an onshore oil wealth fund for the south?