Man spared jail after shotgun threat that shut Europe’s No1 oil terminal

A FORMER employee who sparked a major security alert when he threatened to take a shotgun to Shetland’s Sullom Voe oil terminal last month has been placed under supervision for 18 months.

Lerwick Sheriff Court heard how 48-year-old Roderick Nicolson had called a security guard at the oil terminal on 6 February saying he was going “clean off” his head.

When asked to repeat himself, he said: “The pain’s nipping my head so much I am coming up with my shotgun, not that I am aiming it at anyone, but you had better take cover.”

The terminal, which employs 300 people, immediately closed for one hour, while work at the neighbouring construction site for Total’s new £500 million gas plant was halted for two hours.

An armed response police unit was dispatched to Nicolson’s house at Da Kupp, in Tresta, on Shetland’s west mainland, where he was negotiated from the property and taken into custody.

Procurator-fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said that Nicolson had been “quite flippant” with the police.

Representing himself in court, Nicolson said he could not explain his actions that day and he had not realised the implications of his actions until the police turned up at his house.

“The only time I realised how serious it was, was when they turned up with submachine guns and then I thought: what had I done? That’s when it dawned on me it wasn’t a joke,” he said.

He added: “I really don’t know what was going through my mind when I did that.

“It’s been going through my head ever since and, well, I have got resentments stretching back for years and I suppose the dam burst in a moment of madness.”

Nicolson told the court he suffered from mental illness and had been formally diagnosed with depression.

“Nothing that I can pin down, but I do have a bit of a screw loose,” he said.

It also emerged that he had made a similar threat to his old school in previous years, though he said that had not been so serious.

When Sheriff Philip Mann said he could easily have ended up being injured or worse, had he done something stupid when armed police officers turned up, Nicolson said: “I am very sorry for it all. If I could turn the clock back, I would.

“I really don’t know what prompted me initially to make the phone call.”

Sheriff Mann said that no-one would criticise him for sending Nicolson to jail, but he was satisfied that prison would not achieve the desired result.

Instead he placed Nicolson on an 18-month community payback order and ordered him to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work.

The Sullom Voe complex is Europe’s largest oil terminal.

It is operated by BP Exploration Operating Company on behalf of a consortium of oil companies.

It receives oil both by pipeline and by tanker, which is then shipped from Sullom Voe around the world.