Alex Salmond is set to raise the issue of "Scotland's oil" and high fuel prices when he travels to London on Wednesday for a meeting with ministers of the devolved administrations and the UK Government.

Senior sources at the Scottish Government said the First Minister, concerned at how the high petrol prices were hitting Scottish consumers, would be able to raise the issue under the agenda heading of "financial issues" when he attends the Joint Ministerial Committee under the chairmanship of Jack Straw, Westminster's Justice Secretary.

In a letter to Chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday, Mr Salmond insisted how estimates showed Scotland was currently subsidising the rest of the UK by £4.4bn because of oil revenue.

"It is entirely unacceptable that Scotland's economy and individuals are suffering from sky high fuel prices when it is Scotland's black oil which is filling the Treasury's financial black hole," he wrote.

Last night, Stewart Hosie, the SNP's economics spokesman at Westminster, argued it was not enough for Gordon Brown to say he felt people's pain; action was needed.

"The Chancellor should announce now that he is cancelling the 2p duty rise planned for October.

"He should announce now that he is establishing a fuel-price regulator to reduce duty as oil prices rise and support the amendment to the Finance Bill that the SNP have tabled to achieve this.

"And he should announce now that he will give Scotland a £500m share of the North Sea tax windfall, so that we can begin to secure direct benefits from our own oil resources," said the Dundee East MP.

During his trip to Saudi Arabia yesterday, the Prime Minister declined to say how much higher a barrel of oil, already almost $140, would go.

UK Government ministers are fearful of the impact on the home economy should the level hit $150 a barrel and stay there for any length of time.

While Saudi Arabia has already said it would step up oil production by 200,000 barrels to around 9.7 million per day from July, Algeria, the current holder of Opec's (Organisation of petroleum exporting countries) presidency, made it clear there was enough oil to supply the market and that the oil producers' cartel would make no decision on whether to raise production until its meeting in September.

Despite this, the Prime Minister sounded upbeat, telling reporters: "What we have got is an agreement here - perhaps for the first time - that the oil price is too high and it is detrimental, it is causing damage and that there must be more investment in the supply of oil immediately and for future years.

"What we've also got is an understanding that we've got to diversify out of oil and we've got to back nuclear, we've got to back renewables."

Mr Brown said Britain had entered into commitments with Saudi Arabia to develop environment-friendly carbon capture and storage technology; with Qatar to explore the possibility of a new joint energy fund and with the United Arab Emirates to work on opportunities in nuclear energy.

A decision on £800m of Norwegian investment in the Scira wind farm project off the east coast of England is expected soon.

Yet only last week a report by MPs showed that the limited capacity of Scotland's transmission system had resulted in the so-called "GB queue" of some 9.3 gigawatts of wind energy applications awaiting connection to the grid.

Two large infrastructure projects are in the pipeline - the controversial new Beauly-Denny line and the transmission upgrade between Scotland and northern England - but they could take many years to complete, the former possibly more than a decade.