Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank members who have signed the motion and who are joining me in the chamber to debate the future of the Mossmorran petrochemical site. I have been working on the issue since being re-elected to Parliament in 2016, initially focusing on the noise pollution caused by flaring affecting neighbouring communities, then moving on to the health and safety risks experienced by workers. Now, I am working on the prospect of delivering a just transition for the site. I welcome the work of other members on the issue, including yourself, Deputy Presiding Officer, in your role as the constituency MSP.

The latest research into North Sea oil and gas that was commissioned by the Scottish Government shows a rapidly declining basin. The decline in fossil fuel reserves is irrefutable, and our choice now is whether we accept a slow withering of skills and expertise or grasp the opportunity to safeguard workers’ jobs and maximise the growth of employment opportunities in both renewables and industrial decarbonisation. As the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, stated, we need

“climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”

We do not have the luxury of focusing on just one region or just one industrial site. Workers across Scotland, including at Mossmorran, deserve the assurance that their jobs, too, will be safeguarded in our transition to net zero.

Any credible plan for industrial decarbonisation in Scotland must tackle emissions at Mossmorran. The two plants there directly employ approximately 250 workers, and many other workers are employed on a short-term basis from other parts of Scotland and overseas. The United Kingdom Climate Change Committee reported that the industry is the second-highest emitting sector in Scotland, with the Mossmorran site, operated by Shell and ExxonMobil, being responsible for nearly 10 per cent of Scotland’s total climate change emissions.

In 2022, I commissioned Transition Economics to produce a report on Mossmorran, which considered decarbonisation pathways for the site. Those included carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen and bioethanol. All the decarbonisation options had risks and trade-offs, but it was clear that a fairer, greener future was possible for Mossmorran, its workers and the local community. The report concluded that planning for the net zero future of the site needed to begin as quickly as possible, with operators, workers, unions and Governments brought together around the table.

In October last year I organised a summit facilitated by Dr Daria Shapovalova, co-ordinator of the just transition lab at the University of Aberdeen. That brought together workers, unions, non-governmental organisations and the just transition commissioners in Lochgelly to start the conversation. I wanted to understand what their priorities were for the just transition plan at Mossmorran. All the participants called for a meaningful transition for the site, to be led first and foremost by workers and properly funded by both industry and Government. They cautioned against “just transition” being used as an empty slogan and warned us about what might happen if there was a further delay to real, tangible actions. The workers and unions highlighted the urgency of engaging with operators to collaborate on the development and delivery of a plan for the site.

The operators of the Mossmorran plant, Shell and ExxonMobil, are among the world’s largest oil and gas operators, reporting profits in the billions just last month, but we have not yet seen from them the level of commitment needed to make a genuine transition at Mossmorran happen. The operators have signed up to the Acorn carbon capture and storage cluster, and we are awaiting progress on the bid in track 2 that could allow Grangemouth and Mossmorran to feed in. Questions remain about the effectiveness of CCS, but if the project can meet the higher standards for capture, it could provide a major part of the decarbonisation pathway.

However, in a meeting that I held with both operators shortly after that first summit, it was clear that there was a lack of communication between them and the workforce on those matters. Where does Mossmorran sit in their global portfolios of sites awaiting CCS and other investments? What opportunities would there be for the workforce in skills development or retraining under such a plan? So many questions remain unanswered, and the operators still need to convince the workforce and the community that decarbonisation will actually happen.

Just this week, ExxonMobil’s chief executive blamed the public for the failure to tackle the climate emergency and claimed that ExxonMobil and other oil and gas giants

“have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”

However, it is painfully obvious to me that it is those who make the mega profits from oil and gas who are unwilling to spend enough of them on the transition to a greener future that they have to make.

We had plans to host the second summit tomorrow. It would have welcomed all the participants from our initial summit as well as the site operators, Fife Council and national Governments. However, despite the welcome interest from the minister and Government officials in attending the summit, the site operators—ExxonMobil and Shell—have declined our invitation. Their decision not to come to the table is disappointing. How can we have faith that private companies will invest in the just transition that we so desperately need if they fail to do the bare minimum and join the conversation?

What we have seen recently at Grangemouth should be enough of a warning to us all. We cannot sit on our hands. The future of Mossmorran cannot be decided behind closed doors; it needs to be planned early and openly.

Earlier this week, we agreed that we will go ahead with another summit later this year. We will keep working with Unite the union, the GMB, just transition commissioners and the Scottish Trades Union Congress to ensure that everyone is around the table. I publicly extend an invitation again to the minister, other MSPs and the two site operators to come and be part of that conversation.

The Government’s transition work at Grangemouth has been welcome, but it must be accelerated to other sites across Scotland where emissions are vast and the biggest single steps towards net zero must be made. We have no time to waste. It is our duty to map out the alternative future for sites such as Mossmorran, and we must do so in a fair and just manner that leaves no workers or local communities behind. Inaction is not an option. I will continue to take that duty seriously, and I hope that many members who are joining me in the chamber will do the same.

I certainly do not disagree with Alex Rowley’s argument that we need an industrial strategy that binds together the two Governments in their work in Scotland with industry. However, does he accept that we need a plan for decarbonising the ethylene production site at Mossmorran, as well as a wider industrial strategy that includes Scotland? Does he accept that that plan has to come from the workers and those who have spent their careers operating the site? They understand the issues intricately, and they know what skills will be required for the transition and what the technical solutions might be.

I do not have time to take interventions.

I ask the whole chamber to call out bogus arguments for more oil to deliver energy security for the UK, when we know that 80 per cent of North Sea oil is exported to global markets. I ask members to recognise that exploration licences that are granted today may not even produce oil until 2050, which is five years beyond our net zero target date. I ask members, including Liam Kerr, to wise up about false comparisons between the climate impact of North Sea gas and that of imported liquefied natural gas, when we know that the lowest-carbon gas comes from our nearest neighbours in Norway.

Members need to consider critically the assertion that a 3 per cent increase in the windfall tax would suddenly lead to the collapse of an entire industry overnight, because it is a fact that the energy profits levy came with a supertanker-sized loophole—a tax relief of up to 91 per cent for investment in more oil and gas, which was investment that was most likely going to happen anyway. Closing that loophole could have brought in billions to solve a cost of living crisis that was destroying ordinary people’s lives.

The UK Government could have chosen to make those tax reliefs available for renewable investments in order to create the jobs of the future today, but it chose not to do that. Tax allowances and reduced tax rates have allowed the Treasury to give more money to oil companies than it takes from them. In 2020, Shell was paid £80 million in negative tax, while the chief executive officer pocketed £5.5 million and the shareholders received record dividends, and at the same time, Shell made redundant 330 of its workers in the North Sea. That is absolutely shameful—did the Tories in the north-east condemn that when it happened?

The real traitors will be the ones who understood perfectly well what needed to be done but wilfully stood by, did nothing and condemned future generations to climate chaos and an unjust transition. It is time for responsibility and action, and I look forward to the Scottish Government leading the way.

We are now more than two years on from the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties—COP26: a summit in which the world did not dare mention oil and gas, despite all the warning signs. It was the year when the International Energy Agency and the United Nations called for no new oil and gas fields to be developed in order to keep the 1.5°C target alive. Since then, we have seen why holding down every fraction of a degree of global warming is absolutely critical. The planet has burned and flooded, and we have stood by, helplessly counting the cost.

Finally, last year in Dubai, at a COP summit hosted by a petrostate, there was a breakthrough of sorts—the world added oil and gas into an agreement for the first time. The world is beginning a new consensus on oil and gas, and it is time for the UK Government to abandon its reckless “Drill, baby, drill” approach. The choice that is before the UK Government is to either enable every last drop of oil and gas to be extracted, leading the industry to a deferred cliff-edge collapse, or start managing the decline now and put in place a transition that leaves no workers behind.

It is an inconvenient truth that North Sea oil and gas is in decline, and everyone in the chamber knows it. That is why it is so important for the Scottish Government to move away from supporting maximum economic recovery and start the conversation about a presumption against new oil and gas development.

We need to be aware of bogus arguments and where they originate. In its production gap report, the United Nations warned us that private fossil fuel firms are

“highly politically organised, investing considerable resources into lobbying, campaign finance, public relations and think tank sponsorship”,

and that they exert influence through what the UN has described as

“a revolving door between business and Government.”

I want to ask about the line between the individual cases—or multiple instances of a case—that are presented to you and the work that you do to look for systemic change and analysis of issues. Richard Dixon said earlier that there is evidence that SEPA is taking on more individual cases now, and we have certainly heard that that is the case. I am not entirely clear whether that is a result of increased awareness of the existence of ESS or referrals or whatever but, if the bodies that are primarily responsible for individual cases are picking up more casework, how is that starting to influence the themes and topics on which you then look to do further investigation, with a view to addressing what might be underlying systemic issues? It feels as if there is a bit of an interplay and a bit of a grey line between the two.

So, at the moment, there is a missing bit of the jigsaw puzzle. Currently, individuals come to you with individual issues. It sounds as if you need to screen those and work out whether a systemic issue underlies them. Do multiple individuals and organisations combine similar complaints that maybe point to a systemic issue? Do you discuss with SEPA and other organisations the volume of their individual complaints so that they can say to you that they have a problem with noise monitoring, environmental assessment or whatever, as they have had 30 complaints on that subject, and ask whether you are aware of that? I am interested in what that conversation looks like.

Do you work on that particular issue with the OEP in England and with the equivalent Welsh body? There is a huge debate about water quality, which is worsening in England. Are you taking a shared approach to that, or are there separate workstreams?

A related issue on which we have had correspondence is the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, and one piece of EU legislation that was revoked under that act was the National Emission Ceilings Regulations 2018. You raised concerns at the time about that whole framework and about how we would report and develop plans around air quality after going over the Brexit cliff edge. What do you see coming forward now? Do you have any more intelligence as to how that gap can be filled? I think that those regulations went in the autumn of last year. To my knowledge, no replacement in that area has been announced yet by any of the Governments.

Is there a practical implication if an organisation wants to challenge the Government on whether it is meeting its air quality standards? Is there an immediate gap there, and is that a problem?

I was going to ask about how long the ODPS has been in place and how many times the cap has been breached during that time, but I think that Ms Sizeland has already answered that question. If there is any more detail about that that you want to get on the record, it would be useful to know.