Climate Camp Scotland blasts Petroineos for 'sudden closure' of Grangemouth refinery

A Climate Camp Scotland spokesperson said: “We have always demanded, and continue to demand a just transition. The sudden closure of the Grangemouth oil

refinery, with no alternative employment schemes for workers and little real reduction in carbon emissions[2] at the site is a damning indictment of a market-led

transition away from fossil fuels.

"The refinery has produced vast amounts of money for the billionaire Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe, while dumping huge amounts of pollution onto the town of Grangemouth, one of the most deprived areas in Scotland.

"Grangemouth has been impoverished by oil CEOs, who have wrecked the local and global environment’s life-sustaining ecosystems and made a grotesque amount of money while doing so.

“Ineos should be helping workers transition to new, secure, and well-paid jobs in the clean energy sector, and ensuring that profits are reinvested in the communities

they have hurt.

"The new proposals to instead increase the processing of imported fracked gas at the Grangemouth site, the extraction of which is banned in Scotland, is insulting.

The transition to fracked gas at Grangemouth shows the continued disregard Ineos has for its workers and the environment.”

Climate Camp Scotland is demanding Ineos and the Scottish Government do everything in their power to make the transition to renewable energy fair, and that it

makes the lives of communities and workers better, not worse.

Earlier in the week Petroineos announced over the next 18 months the refinery would undergo a number of projects to transform it from a manufacturing site into an oil terminal, for the import, storage and distribution of a range of fuels.

A spokesman for Petroineos said: "As the energy transition gathers pace, this is a necessary step in adapting our business to reflect the decline in demand for the type of fuels we produce.

"The work we are starting now will take around 18 months to complete and the precise timeline for implementing any change to our operation has yet to be decided. We were determined to ensure that refinery staff heard about these plans directly from management at the earliest opportunity."

The firm stressed this was not a "sudden closure" and was not even a decision to close, it was just the start of work to develop infrastructure that will allow the

Grangemouth refinery to transition to a fuels hub at some, as yet undetermined, point in the future.

They added no timing on the transition to an import terminal had been made as yet.

Petroineos also added the move had nothing to do with importing fracked gas as Climate Camp Scotland suggested, stating the preparatory work happening at the moment will make it possible to import petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and kerosene into Scotland from vessels arriving via the Firth of Forth.