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You said in your opening statement that you are making a loss, so I will pick up on some of the internal mechanisms in the plant. Why is the hydrocracker not fully operational and what would be the impact on your margins if it were?

But you brought forward the date from what was originally planned, which is on the public record. It was a shock to find out that we are now in this position. The date was brought forward from what the data was telling you that it should be and what you were telling both the UK Government and the Scottish Government about that.

Okay, we will see about that. Thank you very much. I might come in again later, convener, if that is okay.

Good morning, and welcome to the 29th meeting in 2024 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. We have received apologies from Willie Coffey.

Our first item of business is a declaration of interests by Daniel Johnson as a newly appointed member of the committee, replacing Claire Baker. Before I ask him to declare any relevant interests, I want to put on record the committee’s thanks to Claire Baker, who has been our convener since the start of this session, for her contribution to the work of the committee.

I welcome Daniel Johnson to the committee and invite him to declare any relevant interests.

Yes, I appreciate the commercial sensitivity; I am fully mindful of that. However, I think that having more public information as to the specific implications with regard to the hydrocracker, and why we are in the current position, would be helpful for the public record.

In addition, I have not seen a public impact assessment of an import terminal. I do not know whether you have undertaken such an assessment, but it would be useful to understand the top-line impacts on environmental security and, in particular, the societal impacts. I draw your attention to the recent commentary from John Bell of Gulfsands, which you will probably have seen. He believes that the impact is significant, and that has been backed up by the PwC report.

Have you undertaken an impact assessment? What can you put in the public domain regarding the implications of the import terminal?

Have you conducted an internal assessment of the hydrocracker and the hydrogen unit that feeds it? Are you able to share that with the committee at all?

I know that other members are going to come in with more detail on a lot of these questions. On Grangemouth in particular, the community has a multitude of issues. The committee’s general sense, as we brought out in our earlier report, was that the community had gained no material benefit from the carbon revolution, and that it has concerns about a just transition.

I understand what you are saying about profit margins and the future direction of travel, but what would need to happen in order for both Ineos and Petroineos, and PetroChina, to pause the plans for the refinery to allow more substantive steps to be taken to enable a just transition?

I fully understand the direction of travel, but what would need to happen for there to be a pause? I think that that is what most people are looking for.

Thank you for being very clear about that. My final question is whether you have specifically asked the UK Government for financial support or, indeed, whether the need for it has been discussed at any point up to today. In other words, could there be any doubt in its mind that that could still have been an incentive to bring about a pause, as I have discussed?

Our next item of business is to choose a new convener. As explained in paper 1, the Parliament has agreed that only members of the Labour Party in Scotland are eligible to be chosen as convener of the committee, and I invite a nomination.

The convener mentioned the economic impact—I think that the figure is 2,822 jobs. Given that many services are shared, there are also concerns about job losses at the chemical plant as a result of the move to an import facility. Do you anticipate any job losses at the chemical plant? If so, how many?