UK Union Demands Action on Grangemouth

In a release sent to Rigzone recently, UK union Unite announced that it has written to UK energy secretary Ed Miliband “demanding action on Grangemouth”.

The union highlighted in the release that, in September, Grangemouth owner Petroineos “announced that it intended to close the only refinery in Scotland with the loss of over 400 directly employed jobs in the second quarter of 2025”. Unite warned in the release that the closure “would also result in thousands more jobs being lost in the company’s supply chain”.

Unite stated in the release that it has produced “a detailed plan which demonstrates how Grangemouth can relatively easily be initially converted into a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) facility, before further developing into a full biofuels outlet”. The union said the creation of a SAF facility is entirely in line with government policies and noted that Unite’s research “has found that converting an existing refinery is 30-70 per cent cheaper than building a new facility”. 

“Unite’s report also highlights serious concerns about Petroineos’ lack of transparency and a lack of evidence from the company about the need to close the refinery,” Unite stated in the release.

“Unite’s report further details how Petroineos has a conflict of interest. The company is half owned by PetroChina which is ramping up its own production of SAFs and would look to import them to the UK,” it added.

“Unite further highlights how the Project Willow research plan is jam tomorrow and has some similar conflicts of interest,” it continued.

In the release, Unite called on Miliband to agree to a three-part plan, which includes “an immediate pause to closure threats and an independent review into the state of the refinery with a detailed transition plan”; “a rapid transition to Hydro-processed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) based SAF conversion in one to three years, without job losses”; and “a long-term transition to advanced SAF and other fuel technologies, the full details to be agreed by the independent review”.

In a letter to Miliband, which was included in the release, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said, “a Labour government not putting together a serious plan for the future of the site, and the thousands of jobs which depend on it, would be a huge dereliction of duty”.

“How this government deals with the threatened closure at Grangemouth will be the key test of your commitment to a just transition for workers and communities, and to our future energy security,” Graham added.

In a statement in the release, Graham said, “Unite has established a clear pathway for the future of Grangemouth, which is totally in line with the government’s own support for sustainable fuels”.

“To close Grangemouth now is madness. It is incumbent on the government to take decisive action. It must break away from the mistruths and distortions created by Petroineos which is putting its own interests ahead of those of the workers, the Scottish economy, and the UK as a whole,” Graham added.

“Continued inaction by the government will not be forgiven or forgotten. A failure to act will totally undermine the confidence of workers across multiple sectors facing huge upheaval as we move to a green economy,” Graham went on to state.

Rigzone asked Petroineos and the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) for comment on Unite’s release.

In response, a Petroineos spokesperson told Rigzone, “last year, in partnership with the Scottish government, we assessed the viability of securing long-term supply of sustainable bio-feedstocks for a potential biorefinery that might make use of existing physical assets at Grangemouth”.

“That work considered the state of the refinery infrastructure and compliance with current and envisaged regulatory conditions. It included economic modelling to evaluate the prospects of such a facility under a range of different circumstances,” the spokesperson added.

“It examined global sourcing and creating new feedstock supply chain options in Scotland. The upshot was that under the current regulatory conditions such a transition was not commercially viable,” the spokesperson continued.

“However, we continue to believe Grangemouth is ideally placed to become a hub of energy-related activity. It is for that reason we initiated Project Willow, to rapidly explore the full range of low-carbon options that could be developed here and, critically, what enabling actions would be necessary by governments to unlock investment in the otherwise sub-economic biofuels space,” the spokesperson went on to state.

“For instance, policy proposals capping the use of HEFA (Hydrotreated Esters and Fatty Acids) unnecessarily sets UK SAF producers at a disadvantage to competitors in Europe and we cannot start a project to repurpose or rebuild facilities like ours in such an environment,” the Petroineos representative concluded.

DESNZ has not yet responded to Rigzone’s request for comment.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com