An independent Scotland would receive up to £1.5 trillion of unexplored oil and gas reserves in the North Sea in the next 40 years, the Scottish Government has said in a report.

The report called ‘Maximising the Return from Oil and Gas in an Independent Scotland’ said this would make the national GDP of Scotland 115% of that of the UK.

It also insisted oil income will rise to up to £57bn and challenged predictions from the UK Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that states short-term oil revenues will flatline to produce cumulative tax revenues of £33.2bn by 2018.

Commenting on the report, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond was quoted by the Guardian as saying every Scottish individual holds oil reserves worth £300,000, which will make Scotland richer than the rest of the UK.

However, the Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR) at Strathclyde University said those figures were misleading, as much of the North Sea’s oil wealth was owned by foreign countries, so using GDP – which measures overall output – as Salmond does, exaggerated Scotland’s prosperity.