MP calls for oil and gas plan, warning of many Grangemouths

'We're talking about a possible Grangemouth every week," she said, "in terms of the level of job loss. It's incredibly significant. Not nearly as devastating for local community as Grangemouth will be, but that kind of devastation will be spread.'
Blackman spoke in advance of a Parliamentary debate which she tabled, at which cross-party MPs joined her call on the government to do more to support North Sea oil and gas workers, as the UK transitions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy production.
She slammed the UK Government for its lack of a clear transition plan. 'There isn't a plan,' she said, 'that's in one coherent place and there's no governmental overview of that plan, so in terms of ensuring that the transition is just, we don't have any oversight of that."
She also drew attention to job losses over recent years, some of which have occurred in her constituency. 'I'm really concerned about where we are. There already have been significant job losses and there are significantly more to come if the government doesn't get it together on this.
'The UK government will contend that they have done some things and to be fair they have put the skills passport in place. But the problem is that there is no point in having a skills passport if those jobs don't exist yet.'
Projections for oil and gas industry job losses have varied widely from 200,000 (the total number of direct and indirect jobs in the industry as claimed by Offshore Energies UK), to tens of thousands, in an industry that supports 30,000 direct jobs.
By Blackman's calculation if 200,000 jobs were lost over a decade, and Grangemouth losses are 400, this would be a rate of almost one Grangemouth a week.
But this is also a sector that, according to a 2023 analysis by Uplift, had already seen oil and gas jobs halved in the previous ten years, 'despite the government issuing hundreds of licences in this period'. Already more than 200,000 jobs have been lost in that time.
Academics at Robert Gordon University have predict a decline of around 30,000 jobs being lost over the next decade.
The decline in jobs and its impact on community was described in the UK Climate Change Committee's Seventh Carbon Budget published earlier this year.
'Volatility in oil and gas markets," it said, "has led to periodic job losses in the sector and, over the last two decades, there has been a steady decline in North Sea production. These have had knock-on impacts on the local economy. As of 2021, direct employment in oil and gas in Aberdeen has declined by nearly one-third since 2015. Household disposable income has fallen and poverty has increased.'
MP Kirsty Blackman (Image: PA) Three quarters of oil and gas workers, Blackman pointed out, live outside the North East of Scotland, and therefore she said, 'this is not just an Aberdeen issue'.
She said: 'This is an issue across the UK because of the number of workers that there are all over the UK that travel offshore. If we keep going in the route that we're going with the reduction in the amount of oil and gas at pace and the Energy Profits Levy [windfall tax], we will see a lack of investment, we will see the jobs going down at a much quicker rate.'
Part of the problem, she highlighted, is that 'offshore wind has not increased at the rate that we would like to see it increase' and she pointed out that she 'would like to see offshore wind moving much faster.'
'If that involves speeding up some of the processes around grid connections, for example, then that would make a very positive difference. If companies are unwilling to do final investment decisions on renewables because there is some unfathomable grid connection queue that is totally not acceptable and the UK Government needs to take that bull by the horns and sort it out.'
Currently, the average North Sea turbine contains three times as much material from abroad as from the UK. As a result, the rapid growth of UK offshore wind – which currently accounts for more than a fifth of global offshore wind capacity – has not fully delivered promised local jobs or prosperity.
'There is also," Blackman added, "an issue around ensuring the proper offshore planning. So, if you look at areas offshore then some of the areas have been licensed for offshore wind. They've also been licensed for carbon capture and storage and for oil and gas extraction. Three different things which are incompatible. So there's not really a proper overview of that.'
A major concern, she added, is the risk that Scotland and the UK will lose workers and skills to jobs in other countries.
'There are already in Aberdeen many people who work in Dubai," she said, "and many who work in other countries who are already highly mobile. These people that are incredibly mobile and very highly skilled will, and are already, moving to another country. We will lose those skills. We will lose that ability to capitalise on those skills that we're going to need for the renewables sector if we don't close this gap somehow.'
Blackman called for the continued commitment of money to the transition. 'We need to see the Spending Review continue to commit to money to GB Energy for example in order to fund the just transition. We need to see that the spending review doesn't pull back on that.
'We need to see a commitment to ensuring that the jobs will continue and that there will not be this very regular tinkering of changes in terms of oil and gas. If you look at all of the countries that have had a windfall tax in place for example, almost all of them have now gone back on that, whereas the UK hasn't. That kind of clarity needs to be provided about actually the government's rhetoric matching the government's actions in this."
Anas Sarwar, Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband (Image: PA) The debate took place ahead of a two-day energy summit in London co-hosted by the UK government and the International Energy Agency at which Keir Starmer is due to speak and coincides with a one million strong petition which will be handed into 10 Downing Street, calling for an end to new oil and gas drilling in the UK.
Cross party MPs joined Blackman's call on the government to prioritise the needs of workers and communities in the transition.
Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent West said: "The government must be bold and turn the dial for North Sea communities. For 14 long years there has been no plan, just job losses upon job losses as the oil and gas declined. We can only make Britain a clean energy superpower if we engage with these workers now and graft their incredible engineering skills into secure new clean jobs in the renewables sector. A just transition must be more than a soundbite.'
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Carla Denyer, Co-Leader of The Green Party and MP for Bristol Central commented: 'Whilst oil and gas companies lobby for lower taxes and more drilling to boost their own profits, workers and communities are bearing the brunt of a disorderly transition. In a declining basin, last-ditch attempts to double down on new oil and gas will not provide workers with the long-term security they deserve.
'It is high time the government stops betting on the private sector to do the right thing and starts delivering in the interests of workers, communities and the country as a whole. That means stopping the expansion of new oil and gas, investing in good quality renewable energy jobs and putting workers and local communities at the heart of transition planning.'
Responding to the debate, UK Energy Minister, Michael Shanks said: "The truth is we should have been planning for this transition a long time ago... There is no greater example of the failure to plan when we knew years ago that Grangemouth was in a precarious position. We should have been planning at that point for the workforce. My driving purpose in this role is to make sure we don't make the same mistake again in the wider North Sea sector.'

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