Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Debate between Dave Doogan and Kenny MacAskill

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

I rise to support amendment 15 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey), and in particular subsection (b) to proposed new section (1ZA), which relates to Grangemouth. There is something perverse and absurd about using Scottish oil if Scotland’s refinery is to close.

We have to transition. It has to be a just transition, which cannot just be a glib phrase. It must also be paced, because we cannot get there overnight. In my constituency of East Lothian, we can see the turbines on the Lammermuirs, and we can see them growing in number daily, and the growth in the number of columns, as offshore wind capacity comes. But we require fossil fuels to deliver that renewable capacity. We require diesel for the trucks, and marine diesel for the ships, out setting the columns and turbines. We also require the plastics that go with much of that. So we need to continue using and exploiting oil to get to a renewable future. We have to do so at a pace that is appropriate, but also ensure that our country benefits. That is why subsection (b) is so important.

There is something perverse in the fact that Scotland is energy-rich, yet people face fuel poverty. In my constituency, we are not seeing the benefits in employment that should come from being in a county that is so energy-rich. The county faces the same problem as Scotland: it is energy-rich, yet people can only look wistfully at the turbines offshore, while they are unable to pay their bills. We must ensure that we get jobs and work here. The refinery at Grangemouth is pivotal to that.

I grew up not in East Lothian but in West Lothian. The Grangemouth refinery has been there for a century—since 1924—not for North sea oil but for its precursor: the shale industry, which was centred in West Lothian, from which came BP, Paraffin Young and others. BP was the centrepiece, along with Imperial Chemical Industries in its various iterations; it is now Petroineos. The refinery initially dealt with the shale industry, but, once North sea oil was discovered, we used it for that oil.

The Forties pipeline comes ashore from the North sea at Cruden Bay, and oil is piped down to Grangemouth because it was meant to be refined there. Grangemouth is also capable of refining oil from elsewhere: a pipeline runs from Finnart in Argyll through to Grangemouth, which allows oil imported from abroad to be refined in Scotland. Yet we face a situation where unless we support the amendment, Grangemouth refinery will likely close. Although a spat has been going on between the SNP, Labour and the Tories about the North sea and its oil, little has been said about what is happening at Grangemouth. The threat has been growing, and action from the Government both here and in Scotland has been in inverse proportion to that.

[Dave Doogan]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have heard me reference Grangemouth and its future in my contribution. I support his ambition to maintain our hydrocarbon future at Grangemouth, as long as it can be sustained economically and environmentally. Does he agree that if we are to prevent the jeopardy that workers at Grangemouth face from ever re-emerging, we need to make sure that sustainable aviation fuel, biofuels and hydrogen are an integral part of Grangemouth’s output? We need to ensure that they overlap with hydrocarbons and leave them behind.

[Kenny MacAskill]

I have had discussions with the shop stewards and unions, whom the Scottish Government may wish to follow and not brush off with cursory meetings. We want a biofuel strategy for Grangemouth, but that is for some significant time in the future. Unless we act now, the refinery could close in 2025. Biofuels will not be refined in Grangemouth or anywhere else in 2025. The shop stewards and the unions wish us to get to biofuels, and Grangemouth must be declared a hub for that, but if it is to survive until then, we must ensure that it is a refinery, not simply a terminal, and that we maintain those skills.

It is absurd that we will continue to exploit Scotland’s oil, yet its refinery will close. There is something perverse about that. Scotland will be the only major oil-producing nation in the world—we are ranked No. 21 along with the UK in the top 25 oil producers—that does not have a refinery capacity. That will put us with large developing countries that produce less oil. We will join a club hosted by the likes of the Republic of Congo and Trinidad and Tobago. I am sure that they are lovely countries—I have never visited—but they are not developed nations with an industrial economy. The danger is that we will become a developing nation, in terms of our industrial base.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dave Doogan and Kenny MacAskill

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

1. To ask the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, representing the House of Commons Commission, what recent assessment the Commission has made of the potential merits of introducing electronic voting.

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (SNP)]

2. To ask the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, representing the House of Commons Commission, what recent assessment the Commission has made of the potential merits of introducing electronic voting.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire)]

The commission has had no recent formal discussions on the potential merits of electronic voting. Colleagues on the Procedure Committee have examined what practical and procedural changes to Divisions might be necessary in the context of the covid-19 outbreak and I thank them for their work on that. I know that they will continue to keep the situation under review. Any decision to implement electronic voting would need to be agreed by the whole House. The commission’s responsibility for this matter would be limited to the financial and staffing implications of such a decision.