The nation's books

Why does oil-rich Scotland now import its petrol?

Q: Why does oil-rich Scotland now import its petrol?

In April 2025, Grangemouth refined its last barrel. A country that has produced oil for half a century now imports its petrol through the very same site. Two governments were on watch. This page apportions responsibility the only honest way: by the powers each one held.

The short answer

In April 2025, the Grangemouth refinery processed its last crude oil. Scotland, which has pumped oil from the North Sea for half a century, no longer refines a single drop of it. The petrol, diesel and jet fuel Scotland runs on now arrives by ship, through an import terminal on the same site where 400 people used to make it (Fuel Oil News).

Two governments were on watch while this happened, and both point at each other. This page won't join either chorus. It does something more useful: it lists what each government controlled, what each did with it, and lets you do the arithmetic. Fair warning to readers of every stripe - neither ledger makes comfortable reading.

What happened at Grangemouth

The facts first. Grangemouth was the UK's oldest refinery, operated by Petroineos, a joint venture between INEOS and the Chinese state oil company PetroChina. In November 2023 the owners announced that refining would end; the last crude ran in April 2025; the site became a fuels import terminal employing around 75 people, against roughly 400 direct refinery jobs lost, before counting contractors and the supply chain (The Chemical Engineer, HazardEx).

Honesty requires the commercial context: this was an ageing plant in a European refining market under real pressure, and the closure decision was taken in boardrooms answerable to shareholders in London and Beijing, not to any electorate. No government ordered Grangemouth shut. But governments had eighteen months' formal notice and years of warnings before that - and what was done with that notice, and with the industry around it, is very much politics.

Shut down on purpose?

You'll hear it said that the industry is being deliberately dismantled. "Deliberately" is a claim about motives, and motives can't be checked. Records can. So here are the two records, sorted by who actually holds which powers.

The UK ledger. Licensing, offshore taxation and the regulation of the industry are reserved to Westminster, so the biggest levers sit in London. What London has done with them: North Sea operators now pay a combined tax rate of 78% (HM Treasury - Energy Profits Levy reforms), among the highest of any basin, without the fiscal stability guarantees that rival producers like Norway offer alongside their high taxes; the Energy Secretary has ruled out new exploration licences; and the industry has shed thousands of jobs since 2022, with fresh rounds of cuts announced in Aberdeen through 2025 (The Scotsman, Energy Voice).

And then there's Acorn, the carbon capture project at St Fergus that was meant to anchor the industry's future - the clearest single entry in the ledger. Passed over for "Track 1" funding in 2021 in favour of English clusters. Granted "Track 2" status in 2023. Funding finally announced in June 2025. And months later, the money had still not begun to flow, one major backer had put its stake up for sale, and the closures of Grangemouth and then the Mossmorran plant had shrunk the list of Scottish emitters the project was designed to serve (Energy Voice - Acorn timeline, Press and Journal). Twenty years of proposals, two decades of "on track". Meanwhile equivalent projects in England were funded first.

The Scottish ledger. Holyrood holds planning, skills, economic development and its own voice - and the record there is one of silence and slowness. In 2023 the Scottish Government published a draft energy strategy containing a "presumption against new oil and gas exploration". It then published nothing final. More than three years on, the finished strategy has not appeared - the Energy Secretary described it as "ready to go" in late 2024, and it still hasn't gone (The Scotsman, The Ferret). An industry employing tens of thousands of Scots has spent years unable to learn what its own devolved government actually wants for it.

On delivery, the record is Project Willow: the joint governments' plan for Grangemouth's future, which identified nine possible projects and up to 800 jobs, needing billions in private investment (Scottish Government, The Scotsman). One year in: £11.4 million of new Scottish Government investment and a forecast of 279 jobs by 2029 (Scottish Government). The 400 refinery workers lost their jobs at once. The replacements are a forecast, four years out.

So: shut down on purpose? The honest answer is that no conspiracy is required. Two governments each made choices that served their own electorates and their own coalitions - a Treasury that needed revenue, a UK energy policy answering English swing seats, a devolved government caught between its industrial heartlands and its climate commitments and choosing, for three years, not to choose. Nobody needed to intend the outcome. Nobody with power was accountable to the people living it.

The awkward fact

Here's the part a campaigning site would leave out, so it goes in. Polling suggests a majority of Scots support moving away from oil and gas over time (The Scotsman). The argument on this page is not "drill forever" - plenty of Scots, including plenty of independence supporters, don't want that.

The argument is about how a transition is run. Norway faces the same declining basin and the same climate pressures - and manages its transition with a state energy company, a two trillion dollar fund, and a plan its workers can read (see our energy page). Scotland's transition is being run by two governments with half a toolkit each: the jobs go now, the strategy is unpublished, and the replacement industries are perpetually five years away. A transition without a plan isn't a transition. It's just decline with a nicer name.

Falling in the gap

Why does nobody pay a political price for this? Because of a design flaw this site keeps finding in different rooms of the same building.

The north-east of Scotland barely registers in the electoral arithmetic that decides UK governments, so no UK government stands or falls on what happens to it. The Scottish Government, whatever it does or fails to do, can point at reserved powers - usually accurately - and change the subject. And because every Scottish election is fought over the constitution, voters angry about energy policy can't cleanly punish anyone for it: the vote is always about something bigger. Accountability leaks out of the system in both directions, and Grangemouth fell through the hole.

That flaw isn't fixed by changing the party in either government. It's a feature of the arrangement itself - and it will apply to the next industrial crisis too, whichever government is nominally in charge of the half-levers that fail to prevent it.

What independence changes, honestly

Not the oil price. Not the age of the plants. Not the reality of a declining basin or the direction of the energy transition. And it comes too late for the refinery: independence would not have guaranteed a different commercial decision by Petroineos.

What it changes is the machinery. One government holding taxation, licensing, carbon capture funding, planning and skills at once, able to design a transition as a package rather than a blame exchange. And one electorate able to reward or sack that government on its energy record, at elections finally fought on the merits - because there are real arguments to have. The independence movement itself contains the full spectrum, from full-throated defenders of the industry to those who'd wind it down faster (Scottish Business Insider). Those arguments are exactly what a normal country's elections are for. Scotland's elections currently can't be about them.

So what's the real question?

Not who to blame for Grangemouth - both ledgers are written, both are public, and this page has shown you both.

The real question is the one every page here ends on: who should be accountable for what happens to Scotland's industries? Today the answer is split between a government that doesn't need Scotland's votes and a government that doesn't hold Scotland's levers - an arrangement in which everyone is responsible and no one is answerable. An oil country that imports its petrol is what that arrangement produces. The case for independence isn't that Scotland would never make bad energy decisions. It's that they would be Scotland's decisions, made by people the folk of Grangemouth and Aberdeen can vote out.

Take it with you

Facts for sharing - each button copies the line, with its source and a link back to this page.

In April 2025 Grangemouth refined its last barrel. Scotland, an oil producer for fifty years, now imports its petrol, diesel and jet fuel through the same site (Petroineos)
North Sea operators pay a 78% tax rate, new exploration licences have been ruled out, and the Acorn carbon capture funding announced in June 2025 had still not arrived months later (Energy Voice)
The Scottish Government drafted a 'presumption against new oil and gas exploration' in 2023 - and more than three years on has still not published its final energy strategy (The Scotsman)
Grangemouth's replacement plan promises up to 800 jobs. Its first year delivered £11.4 million and a forecast of 279 jobs by 2029, against 400 lost at once (Project Willow, Scottish Government)