BP Closes Forties Pipeline after Ineos’ Grangemouth Strike

By the time you read this BP will have closed a pipeline carrying 600,000 barrels of oil daily, half of Britain’s total output.  Striking workers have shut down the Grangemouth refinery which provides the energy for the Forties Pipeline.  Without that energy the pipelline must shut down from 06:00 sunday morning. 

Ineos, the chemical company which owns Grangemouth has previously clashed with UNITE, a union representing some 800 workers.  The dispute concerns a pension plan which Ian Fyfe, human resources manager at Ineos, claims is “one of the most expensive pension plans in the UK, we can’t afford it.”

The strike is the first to close a British refinery in seventy years and a its domino affect will disrupt seventy fields and 80 companies.  ConocoPhillips will close Britannia, the UK’s largest gas field and Nexen Inc. will shuts its 200,000 barrel a day Buzzard field since the output travels through the Forties pipeline.  The pipeline accounts for 10% of Britain’s gas supply and the oil it carries is worth $100m a day.

Industry body Oil & Gas UK’s chief executive officer Malcolm Webb called on the government to help settle the strike dispute, “This is now affecting some 80 companies and their operations which are in no way connected to or involved in this dispute.”  he said,  “The impact … goes way beyond Ineos and UNITE’s immediate differences and is wholly disproportionate.”

Ineos has a history of rumoured anti-union actions, which it denies.  Ian Fyfe said “The hard part is the union don’t seem to understand that by taking this action, Ineos Capital have choices to make about where they put their money,’

‘We need this huge investment to make this thing profitable in the long term. They’ve got a choice: they can say ‘we’ll put that money in Norway, or France or Germany, and not Grangemouth.

‘We’ve assessed that, without this investment, huge amounts of this plant will close down and we’ll lose 650 jobs, half the workforce.” His words seem hardly sympathetic and it appears the dispute will continue with UNITE and Ineos both unwilling to concede any ground.

The Grangemouth plant will re-open 7pm Tuesday night but it will take days for supply to reutn to normal