Readers' Letters: Let's take Grangemouth processing plant for Scotland

The real reason for the intended Grangemouth refinery closure is the same as the reason for the huge increase in energy costs in the UK leading to very high inflation and the subsequent reduced value of wages and increased poverty. That reason is the privatisation of our oil and gas resources and industries by UK governments. The private oil and gas companies have no obligation to provide oil and gas to the UK. So even though we have these resources in our territorial waters we had to compete for oil and gas supplies on the world market and prices increased hugely due to the Ukraine-Russia war.

Keeping Grangemouth oil refinery in public ownership could make for a smoother just transition, says reader (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Grangemouth is shutting down processing because the private company’s priority is maximising profit. If processing can be carried out cheaper elsewhere the company will stop processing here. Any damage to the workforce and the surrounding area or the effects on Scotland and its economy are not the company’s priority.

As the Grangemouth processing plant and the workforce are of no value to them, why not take it into public ownership? Its existing function could continue, with carbon capture in the Acorn project. That part of the Grangemouth plant proposed to handle imports would no longer have value to the current owners.

The oil refining in public ownership could gradually be reduced until no longer required and replaced by green energy produced in Scotland. Avoiding profiteering privatisation of that green energy and keeping it in public ownership should make the just transition easier.

Our low cost, neverending green energy will reverse the price increases generally. Industry wanting low cost energy and to meet customer demand for green energy produce will be attracted here, improving further Scotland’s economy.

Jim Stamper, Bearsden, Glasgow

Unjust transition

The fact that Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar continued their three-week witch hunt of Michael Matheson rather than quizzing the First Minister on Grangemouth at FMQs shows where their priorities lie.

The UK government has forked out billions to save car workers’ jobs in the North of England and in steel plants in Wales, so why not to maintain Scotland’s energy security? Westminster failed Scotland as our oil revenues were not used to reinvest in Scotland’s renewable manufacturing infrastructure such as hydrogen fuel cells or wind turbines. This is what happened in Norway and Denmark.

The closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery does not hasten our transition to renewables nor make us more sustainable. It only threatens well-paid skilled jobs, both the local and national economy, decreases our energy security and massively increases our dependence on the rest of the UK to manage our own resources and to provide us with a supply of fuel. Grangemouth has, sadly, become a further example of how control of its own energy assets and natural resources has been wrested away from Scotland.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

Green and red

The longstanding hostility of the SNP and Green MSPs against the oil and gas industry is solely to blame for the closure within 18 months of Scotland's crude oil refinery in Grangemouth (your report, 23 November). This could affect 400 jobs at Grangemouth and some of the 10,000 jobs in the supply chain. Petroineos will import the finished fuel products for onward distribution to customers and the emissions will be another country's problem – not that they will be bothered as profits trump greenhouse gases.

The usual suspects are now shedding crocodile tears as they all strive publicly to show sympathy for the workers despite having caused the problem. Only now are politicians and others admitting, as the Scotsman Editorial said: “The UK is still heavily reliant on oil and gas and will be for some time to come.” The baying Green mobs who want to destroy the economy must be silenced. One such person is Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay, who said “Petroineos is a climate-wrecking business giant and has abandoned its workers and the local community.” She is a hypocrite, since it is the Greens who want to destroy the economy and take us back to the Dark Ages. Green on the outside, Red on the inside.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

No problem

Your reported consternation and hand-wringing over the planned closure of Grangemouth refinery (“Carbon capture project at risk”, 24 November) misses the point. If Petroineos eventually shuts down the refinery then, at a stroke, the single largest source of carbon emissions and airborne pollution in Scotland will disappear forever. And, as a bonus, the taxpayer-funded billion-pound Acorn project may well collapse. We can only hope.

Jeff Rogers, Waters of Feugh, Banchory

Cold-blooded

The similarities between Margaret Thatcher's supposed cold-blooded devastation of industrial Scotland in the 1980s and the present much bigger and ongoing destruction of our thriving oil and gas sector by the SNP/Greens is more than startling.

Clearly, the administration running Scotland at present, with all the levers at their command, is not the brightest and members are more interested in satisfying the fantasy dogma of Green extremists than protecting a world-class industry that would keep us safe and warm for the foreseeable future while new and sustainable methods of doing so are found and developed.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Cold cars

Some concerns have been raised about Scotland’s net zero transport policy being fit for purpose.For example, what provision is there in Scotland for winter weather travel using electric vehicles? What happens if there are hundreds of electric vehicles at a standstill with frozen passengers because they are out of charge in freezing weather conditions and blocking our main roadways? And… what happens when the presumably electrically driven rescue vehicles also run out of charge?

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

All talk...

Mary Douglas (Letters, 23 November) reminds me that one of my final duties before I retired in 2006 as HR Director of an Acute Hospitals Trust was to submit a manpower plan as requested by the then Scottish Executive. The future implications of the Scottish population profile were obvious to all, and well recognised by the Trust and Health Board executives.

The thinktank Our Scottish Future told us recently that in the past decade the Scottish Government has produced 529 strategies or plans, of which 113 are on health and social care. It is as if the Scottish Government thinks its purpose is to generate strategies, but to do nothing about implementing any of them.

That today's Health Board executives are complaining about the problems of dealing with an aging population shows that the Scottish Government has failed in its duties. Adequate numbers of qualified staff are what is needed, not knee-jerk announcements about how many millions are to be spent to help Health Boards tackle the problem. But it takes time – many years in some instances – to train the necessary staff.

If 20 years ago the Scottish Government had started to increase and fund medical and other healthcare professional training places and staffing establishments we would not be where we are now. Since 2006 it has done nothing but waste irrecoverable time.

Hamish Johnston, Balloch, Inverness

Action needed

Population increase within the UK appears to requires a Sheffield-sized city every year in accommodation. To even those who protest every attempt to remove those failed asylum seekers the impact of this magnitude of immigration surely gives rise to some degree of disquiet regarding these figures.

Obviously the boat people are a problem but government policy regarding those who arrive legally for education or jobs, along with all those dependant on them, places additional pressures on lack of housing and the health service.

So, who is going to take control of this, and indeed, the myriad problems besetting our country?

With an election approaching over the horizon we can expect lots of promises but what we really need is action from government departments tasked with delivering these promises.

We, must expect those paid to deliver to get back into their offices and knuckle down to achieve or explain why they cannot. Further to this, we must hold government ministers to account for the apparent failure of government to get a grip.

This failure by government is ruining any chances of improvement for our country. It has to change in every way and I don’t mean electing more of the same old baloney.

T Lewis, Coylton, Ayrshire

Airwaves Angus

So SNP minister Angus Robertson, who sits as an MSP in a devolved administration with an exclusively domestic remit, is on a multi-city trip to China and, according to the press release bigging up his trip, he seemingly has little concern for human rights or security issues there.

Oh well, never mind, let's at least hope this SNP minister proves capable of logging onto his hotel's wifi.

Martin Redfern, Melrose Roxburghshire

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