The Falklands: "It is possible that the first producing well will be drilled in the next two years" !?!?
The Mail on Sunday, February 25
The Falklanders Are Getting Rich - In The Kind Of Society Most Britons Would Envy
BY RUSSELL MILLER
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Strict immigration laws have been introduced to control the growth of the population. Stanley is now home to 1,600 people, but 500 additional contract workers are needed to support the thriving economy.
With reserves in excess of Pounds 70 million, the Falkland Islands are totally self-sufficient, discounting the cost of defence. At the last count, the GNP equated to Pounds 21,000 for every man, woman and child. There is no unemployment.
All this wealth is almost entirely due to a rubbery, wriggling creature called a cephalopod, more commonly known as a squid, millions of which obligingly spawn within the Falkland Islands conservation zone.
'Squid,' says John Barton, the Director of Fisheries, 'Provide 60 pence of every pound the government spends'.
Before the war, foreign ships happily Hoovered up the rich harvest in Falklands waters and there was precious little the islanders could do about it, since the British Government was reluctant to upset Argentina by asserting the islands' fishing rights. All that changed, of course, after 1982.
The sale of fishing licences now generates nearly Pounds 30 million every year and an increasing number of ships are jointly owned by Falklanders, who get priority in licence applications.
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While Port Stanley is thriving, the same cannot be said for 'The camp', the huge expanse of bleak moorland outside the capital where the few surviving sheep farmers are finding it hard to make ends meet after the collapse of wool prices. Since the war there has been a steady drift into Port Stanley, where jobs are easy to find and living conditions less demanding. The population in the camp has halved in the past 20 years and only 370 people remain, spread across an area about two-thirds the size of Wales.
Tourism is being touted as a potential moneymaker. Parts of the islands have an austere beauty not unlike areas of Scotland and there is world-class game fishing to be had on many of the rivers, while the wildlife is unrivalled.
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Port Stanley is now a regular stop-off for cruise ships: 37,000 tourists landed from 72 ships last year and it is predicted that they could number 100,000 by 2005.
Undoubtedly, the town's attraction is its curiosity value - a bizarre more-British-than-the-British community marooned in time in the middle of the South Atlantic.
Port Stanley still has red telephone boxes and the kind of courteous a blessing for us tweed, twin-set and pearls lifestyle that characterised Britain in the Fifties. There is no graffiti to be seen, no drugs and precious little crime. Sunday evensong in Stanley's modest cathedral always begins with the National Anthem.
Islanders like to claim not just that they all know each other but they know each other's names.
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There is certainly no prospect of the huge military garrison around the international airport, 35 miles from Port Stanley, being disbanded in the immediate future. Commander Colin Martin, the naval officer in charge of military operations, says: 'I can't see in my military lifetime that we'll ever go home.' The Pounds 70 million cost of maintaining the garrison is met by Britain, but the Falkland Islands government has pledged to take over the burden should oil be discovered in sufficient quantity in its waters.
Meanwhile, there is excited talk about oil revenues generating the equivalent of Pounds 500,000 for every man, woman and child.
Six exploratory wells have been drilled 90 miles north of the islands and the results are promising.
Experts estimate there could be at least 60 billion barrels under the heaving, foam-flecked surface of the South Atlantic.
It is possible that the first producing well will be drilled in the next two years, perhaps making the islands even more attractive to an Argentina in thrall to a severe economic recession.
The islanders remain steadfastly opposed to any rapprochement.
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