Energy in History

Closure of Grangemouth oil refinery

In November 2023, Petroineos announced it intended to close Grangemouth oil refinery by 2025.

Grangemouth is Scotland's only remaining refinery, and dates back a century, having been officially opened in 1924.

The refinery is at the centre of a complex of petrochemcials plants which cumulatively employs around 2,000 workers.

It is also Scotland's largest source of carbon emissions.

In 2024, Ewan Gibbs interviewed workers at the Grangemouth complex with Riyoko Shibe, including both refinery and petrochemcials workers employed by Petroineos and INEOS.

They published a report for the Just Transition Commission based on this research.

The Grangemouth Refinery Closure - Workers Perspectives PDF)

Below are some extracts from the interviews which reveal how workers have responded to the announcement and their thoughts on what the future should look like.  

Workers' perspectives

"It's a lifeline for many people, I believe. ... They came out of school and they were coming in here. They were that proud they would have their hi-vis vests so they'd actually walk about in the town centre with a hi-vis vest on just to show affiliation with working here."

"We've got families here. We were brought up in these communities round about it.  And as well as that, we’ve got the terms and conditions that if I ignore the oil and gas sector and I say the local jobs market, I mean, there isn't really anybody paying the same, sort of, wages on the scale and terms and conditions it at the refinery."

"A lot of people that don't work in here, there’s a lot of respect for the guys that do work in here because of the amount of money they put into the local economy. You go to the shopping centre and it’s just full of overalls from either contractors or staff from the refinery."

"Government's got a responsibility to attract industry and business and all that kind of stuff. I mean, being an oil worker, you know, you don't need to look far, you look at places like Norway, for example, and look what they're doing, and they're in the same North Sea as we’re in, yet they're probably decades ahead of us in terms of the investment they’ve made in that sector. You know, they take stuff out the ground, they've thought of doing carbon capture storage, all that kind of stuff, stuff that we should have been doing a long time ago. So yeah, I think it [creating jobs in different sectors] sits pretty much squarely with the governments, both the Scottish and the UK."

"The idea of going offshore or working abroad wasn't something I wanted to do. I was happy to stay in Grangemouth and work in Grangemouth."

I think I've got as much climate anxiety as anybody else. You know, you hear these things, and you just think, ah, you know, what world are we leaving for our children. So, you know, I don’t have any invested interest in destroying the planet more than anyone else. If we can make a go of green energies, then I think that would be fantastic."

See the Energy in History page on What is a just transition? for more information about the background to this concept.