Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said workers at a Fife plant threatened with closure are going through a “difficult time” after its owner accused the UK Government of “undermining” the business.
ExxonMobil announced on Tuesday it would shutter the Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran in February, with more than 400 jobs put at risk.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, the Prime Minister claimed the plant was losing £1 million per week.
On Wednesday morning, ExxonMobil chairman Paul Greenwood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the closure was partly down to “deliberate” decisions taken by the Government.
He said there are “four keys to success” in the sector – a cheap and abundant supply of ethane, along with low-cost operations, good market prices for ethylene and a skilled workforce.
Mr Greenwood said: “I will be blunt – I have one of those keys to success in place, and that is a brilliant workforce.
“Two of those keys I deliberately do not have because of Government policy.”
A constricting North Sea oil and gas industry, Mr Greenwood said, was limiting the supply of cheap ethylene while high taxes for CO2 cost the firm £20 million last year.
Mr Greenwood added: “I also have to deal with high energy costs and those kind of things – so these are deliberate Government policies that are undermining us.”
The comments prompted an attack from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions, who said: “All of this speculation is having real-world consequences. Just this morning, the UK chair of ExxonMobil said, and I quote: ‘The Government needs to understand that the whole industrial base of the UK is at risk unless they wake up and realise the damage their economic policies are doing’.
“Can the Prime Minister tell us is the loss of UK industry the price the country has to pay for having a clueless Chancellor?”
The Prime Minister replied: “It is a difficult time for the workforce there and we must focus on supporting them.
“We’ve been meeting the company for over six months and explored every possible, reasonable avenue.
“They have been facing losses for the last five years – it’s best to do the detail before you chunter – and they’re currently losing £1 million a week.
“But she talks about policy and approach on energy policy, she follows Reform on the European Convention. She follows the man who wants her job.”
The Scottish Government has already pledged it will “explore all options” to support workers at the plant – but Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes also made clear it was “crucial” that Labour ministers at Westminster “consider what more they can do for the workers at the plant and take urgent action”.
However, UK industry minister Chris McDonald has indicated the Government is not prepared to keep the site open.
Mr McDonald told MPs on Tuesday that “where Government has intervened in the past, it has been where there’s been a fundamentally sound business proposition”.
Ms Forbes said that in discussions with the firm both last week and on Monday she had been “surprised by how quickly that conversation moved from them actively marking the plant to finding no viable buyer, and therefore moving to the news that they would begin closure in February”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, she said: “You have to look at the reasons ExxonMobil have given for their decision and I have pushed them on these decisions in our conversations.
“But they have cited some of the policy and fiscal decisions that have been made in the UK that are making business less competitive.”
While she accepted there were “challenges” for the company in terms of market conditions and high energy prices, she added: “That will be cold comfort to the 179 ExxonMobil staff and the 250 contractors who yesterday learned that their jobs are at risk.”
The Scottish Government’s priority is now to look at “whether there is an alternative future at the site” as well as to support the workforce at a “really troubling time time”, she added.
Ms Forbes said: “What we want to be focusing in on is how we create new economic opportunities there, how we engage with the company, how even if they struggle to find a buyer whether there is other options for the site.
“The workers at the site are extremely highly skilled, they are absolutely critical to any just transition we take in this country, so we cannot afford to lose them.
“I think we need to do all that we can to retain that as a key employer and a key industrial site.”
