Edinburgh, 28 November 2024: Grangemouth workers march against closure. Photo Jane Barlow/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo.
Hundreds of oil workers from the threatened Grangemouth refinery, delegations from other refineries around the country, and their supporters, marched on Holyrood in Edinburgh on 28 November. The Grangemouth plant, on the Forth near Falkirk, is owned by Petroineos, a joint venture between the multinational Ineos and the Chinese oil and gas company PetroChina.
The refinery is due to close by summer of 2025 with the loss of 500 jobs at the site and around 3,000 jobs in the supply chain. It is Scotland’s only remaining oil refinery, and its closure will leave Britain with only five major refineries, and increasingly dependent on expensive (and polluting) imports.
Around 125,000 workers are employed directly or indirectly around Britain in oil and gas production; the industry is central to the country’s energy security.
The Unite trade union has consistently campaigned against arbitrary and ill-thought out abandonment of oil and gas – “no ban without a plan”. Holyrood’s Just Transition Commission and Project Willow were set up to procrastinate while the refinery closes.
Last September the TUC Congress supported a motion demanding that the government stop its freeze on new drilling licences in the North Sea oil fields. Meanwhile the government gives away, through its UK Export Finance programme, €700 million (about £578 million) of taxpayers’ money to Ineos to build an ethane cracker in Belgium.