Save the Grangemouth oil refinery

It isn’t clear to me who Vinny is suggesting should keep this refinery going as it is. If he means the current owners, then why should they be saddled with being unable to unburden themselves from this loss maker when plenty of other refinery owners have been able to cut their losses and close ?

Glancing at the Scottish Press this morning I note that the local SNP MSP is calling for ’any and all assistance from the Scottish Government’, but what likelihood of that, given the SNP’s and most political parties antipathy towards the oil industry ?

This morning’s Scottish Herald reports that ‘Company sources told the Herald that the size of the losses incurred by the company were at a level that could not be sustained by any Government support’ and that’s before you consider the other factors that Vinny’s link draws attention to …. problems in trying to protect the site and vehicles from protesters causing disruption leading to 20 arrests, an unofficial walk out by contractors, and a staff that voted to strike for better pay when the company was losing money hand over fist ….and all that was just last year.

And as a business that is a partly in the hands of Chinese state owned PetroChina, pulling out or downsizing from an antagonistic UK which dislikes your business and dislikes your country seems eminently sensible. A business decision was overdue on a plant that’s made £360 million losses over the last 2 years, a figure the BBC inexplicably decided wasn’t worth mentioning in their outline of the situation.

For those more interested in carbon footprints perhaps the Greens and the LibDems would like to buy the plant between them and keep it going as it is ? Maybe Rachel Reeves can make an advance payment on behalf of Labour and say 'hold on for 12 months and the taxpayer will happily stump up to keep this giant loss maker going as it is ?'

Going back to Vinny’s BBC link, we learn that the refinery accounts for 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing base. You can’t help but conclude that radical Scots are starting to reap what they’ve sown.



Scottish Daily Mail

There is no point Westminster getting involved as next year we are likely to have a Labour Government who have already said they want to run down oil and gas extraction so Grangemouth would just become more uneconomic year on year.

Because there is no desire to become energy independent then closing Grangemouth and becoming more reliant on imports is the natural outcome.