Oil and gas: no ban without a plan. Slogan at an August demonstration at Grangemouth. Photo Workers.
Look behind the fine façade of the Just Transition Commission, and all you find are false promises, lack of transparency, indifference, and inaction by governments ducking their responsibilities…
“Everyone keeps saying it’s going to go green. There’s opportunities out there but nobody just seems to want to put their name or put a policy to it.....”
These words of a worker at the Grangemouth Oil Refinery, buried deep in a Just Transition Commission report annex, come closest to describing the reality of closure.
“We are not dinosaurs”, said the Grangemouth workers, “but the decision to close the place is a fast-paced decision, it’s purely that jobs will go to other countries…” From the horse’s mouth – Scottish Secretary Ian Murray replied he couldn’t promise jobs: to that extent he was honest.
On 3 October this year, with the refinery due to close in a few months in favour of a terminal importing oil refined abroad, the Scottish government added to the uncertainty by delaying its so-called “just transition” plan until next spring. Such vagueness makes it clear there is no easy plan for the area, just hollow words about “closure and greening shaped in a socially positive way”.
Excuses abound, financial viability being one. Scottish climate minister Alasdair Allen said in Holyrood that delay would give more time to collect evidence from the Project Willow study, a procrastinating joint government review of the site’s potential as a clean energy hub. They have had over five years to do this.
The Just Transition Commission, supposedly independent, was set up to ease the transition to net zero in Scotland. Its reports, published since 2021, bemoan the limitations of collective efforts and blame Petroineos, a joint venture between foreign state-owned enterprise (PetroChina) and private ownership (Ineos).
Petroineos is castigated for attending only to its corporate interests. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Government is offloading culpability. Petroineos says there was never any question of government stepping in to save the plant.
It doesn’t end there. Grangemouth is a litmus test for the commission, the first of a series of “just transition” plans for Scotland’s 20 highest emitting sites. Across Britain workers are told the phase-out of fossil fuels is inevitable – as steelworkers at Port Talbot in Wales and in Scunthorpe know to their cost.
On Teesside, with blast furnaces already closed down and 20,000 jobs lost, new jobs at the projected electric arc furnace will be delayed until at least 2032 due to the inability of the National Grid to provide backup.
Backlash
Fearing a backlash like that over pit closures, the commission aims to get workers to cooperate in an “intergenerational social contract”, trusting businesses and colleges to produce skills out of a wasteland. The reward, it says, will be “fair work”, meaning jobs for a few, a chimera for most.
The refinery, it goes on, does not define the Grangemouth economy. Tell that to the community – the many small businesses, the supply chain, the retail, the cafes, the cultural and sporting bodies in the area, which depend on spending by the workers and their families, including the North Sea oil and gas riggers home on leave.
The future, they are told, lies with development of the Forth Green Freeport, including Grangemouth and Rosyth (both designated employers’ tax relief sites in June this year), and the investment through Individual Savings Accounts and pension funds.
‘The refinery, says the commission, does not define the Grangemouth economy. Tell that to the community…’
Oil workers are not climate deniers. Many have known from a young age that an energy mix including renewables and nuclear would be the future model. But they are worried about energy security and the deliberate underinvestment in refined products of petrol and aviation fuel, for which the Grangemouth hydrocracker (which upgrades low-quality heavy gas oils) was uniquely suited.
The workers want a longer transition creating a more stable base for notoriously intermittent renewables. Responding to the commission, they said: “The refinery has to continue refining to be part of that – for new low carbon solutions (blue hydrogen, biorefining) to come online...that’s the closest you’ll get to a just transition for this site.”
Now industrialists are belatedly speaking out in defence of Grangemouth. It was reported on 6 October that Scottish Gulfsands Petroleum CEO and former Grangemouth apprentice John Bell has called on the government to save a vital national asset, pointing out the increase in Britain’s carbon footprint from importing oil.
Petroineos claimed 400 to 500 direct jobs would be lost: this was the figure accepted by net zero fanatics to bolster their closure schemes. Now accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates over 2,800 jobs will be impacted. John Bell thinks that even that is an underestimate. He calls for an urgent review and a “proper transition” in view of Britain’s vulnerability on energy security.
“Something seems wrong”, he said, “when 80 per cent of North Sea oil is exported while…less than 20 per cent of Grangemouth’s feedstock has come from the UK – over 50 per cent less than 10 years ago.” He wants the government to subsidise North Sea crude to ensure it is refined locally.
Saudi and Australian recruiting agents are rumoured to have been sniffing around Grangemouth and Port Talbot. If jobs cannot be kept open nor a genuine career path found beyond oil and steel, these highly skilled workers will not be around to deliver any sort of transition.
Now is the time for unions to shout louder and move quickly. Unite’s pre-election call – No Ban Without a Plan – was endorsed by the TUC, but politely ignored by the new government. Labour under Starmer is on the back foot. There may yet be opportunities for workers to save essential parts of British industry and shape an independent national energy policy.
• See CPBML video of protests by Grangemouth workers on our X/Twitter feed.