Energy in History

Petrochemical Fife

The Mossmorran petrochemical complex connects Fife in Eastern Scotland to gas fields in the Northern North Sea.

It was built during the late 1970s and 1980s following an extensive public inquiry, following objections from the Aberdour and Dalgety Bay Combined Action Group. These objections pitted a small group of environmentalists against two of the world’s largest oil companies, Shell and Esso, who respectively own the Natural Gas Liquid Plant and the Ethylene Plant.

Furthermore, the British government saw Mossmorran as an important opportunity to take full economic advantage of the North Sea, by avoiding the wasteful flaring of gas on the Brent pipeline system and creating manufacturing jobs in Fife. The local council felt similarly, as it faced growing unemployment, which was especially concentrated in the West Fife coal towns surrounding the new complex.

Petrochemical products are exported from Mossmorran to tanker, and it also supplies feedstock across the Forth to Grangemouth via tanker.

The plant has continued to be subject to protest by local activists, especially following incidents of flaring and tremors in the late 2010s.

The project was welcomed by local politicians such as Robert Gough, the Labour Party convener of Fife Regional Council, who wrote of the plants as a technical marvel in the foreword to a pamphlet published by Shell:

"There is more to it than economic. If someone had told me when I was a boy in Buckhaven that one there would be a plant on the Firth of Forth processing gas that had been extracted from a reservoir 10,000 feet under the bed of the North Sea 300 miles off Aberdeen, I would have though it was fiction. Today it is happening. It is an immense achievement of human endeavour."

…

"[Gas] is ‘a precious raw material, one that will make its own contribution to the nation’s economy, and to help make the lives of millions of people more convenient, more comfortable, more safe and altogether more prosperous."

Mossmorran and Braefoot Bay (Shell UK Exploration and Production, 1984) 

The Action Group had a competing perspective, viewing the new complex as an unwanted imposition on the landscape of Fife:

"The environment of our country is also a valuable and finite resource which we cannot afford to expand without the fullest consideration."

…

"An important decision from the level of an uneven struggle between the oil companies' commercial opportunism and the wishes of the local people."

Aberdour and Dalgety Bay Combined Action Group, Hostage to Hazard (1977)

UK government records indicate that ministers were being advised in the late 1970s that Mossmorran delays could cost £380 million per annum (over £2 billion in £2024) in balance of payment costs, at a time when this was a crucial economic indicator.

A briefing prepared for Tony Benn, Secretary of State for Energy, in 1978, underlined these threats:

"Any further delay will have serious economic consequences for the country, since it will progressively affect the overall exploitation of the Brent field."

 …

"The effect on UK petrochemical development will be to make it even more difficult to persuade international firms to locate in UK."

Briefing for the Secretary of State for his meeting with Secretary of State for Scotland on the Mossmorran Planning Applications, 22 June 1978, The National Archives, Kew, EG 13/179. 

Local people's stories

Mark Wilson was a miner's son who was disappointed he was unable to follow his father into the industry. He subsequently trained as an electrician, finding work at Mossmorran. During an interview in 2022, Mark recalled a sense of optimism surrounded the plant's construction.

I can kinda remember big bits of kit, especially early doors, you’re talking it must have started early to mid-eighties. I can kind of mind being in Dunfermline big bits of kit were coming across. Huge bits of kit all coming’ closing the Forth Road Bridge on the way to Edinburgh.’"

It was the usual, you had people going oh excellent a big thing like that being built on my door. You’ve got to mind, the pits got goosed. Cowdenbeath was the workshops fir aw the pits. And this thing’s getting built right on their doorstep. I think for long enough, the good thing about that getting built is that there was that many pipefitters, electricians, laggers, steel erectors, that many actually working in there that the likes of Grangemouth when they wanted stuff getting done they had tae up the wages. Ken, supply and demand, with all the boys in there."

Mary Lockhart is a local councillor for Lochgelly, Cardenden and Benarty in West Fife. She has joined protests against flaring at the plant, following in the footsteps of her mother who had helped oppose its construction as a councillor.

In 2022, Mary explained the fear caused by flaring and tremors during the late 2010s

Terrifying. I was in Ballingry then and I have Venetian blinds at the back of the house and they rattled because of it. All that was. In Lochgelly, cause I came up this way to see it at night because my constituents were in such a state about it and it sounded like you were standing next to several aircraft taking off. There were bangs. Glasses broke in people’s cupboards because of the extent of the vibration. People’s houses were moving. Children were waking up in the night time thinking their house was on fire because the sky was alight it felt as if it was all alight. And of course it was magnified if you see it on the ceilings. Umpteen children started wetting the bed who had never been bedwetters before. There was a fine dust everywhere on people’s cars and everything."