Closure of Grangemouth Oil Refinery: Workers’ Views on Unjust Transition

Speakers:

Riyoko Shibe, PhD student in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow

Dr Ewan Gibbs, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow

Riyoko Shibe is a PhD student in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Their ESRC-funded project examines Grangemouth’s oil and petrochemical sector under BP since 1950, and what it was like to live around and work in noxious industry. In 2024 Riyoko co-authored a report for the Just Transition Commission with Ewan Gibbs, “The Grangemouth Refinery Closure: Workers' Perspectives”. Since May 2025, they have been working for the JTC on how to maximise the social value of just transition funding for Grangemouth, with a report “Just Transition Conditionalities: Building a Toolkit for Scotland” forthcoming in October 2025.

Ewan Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He is a historian of labour and energy, focusing on employment and redundancy during industrial restructuring. His first book, Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland, was published by the University of London Press in 2021. In 2024 Ewan co-authored a report with Riyoko Shibe, Grangemouth Refinery Closure: Workers' Perspectives, for the Just Transition Commission, an advisory body to the Scottish government. He has since published journal articles on the closure and made many media appearances discussing implications for government policy.

Fossil fuel workers are central to achieving a ‘just transition’ to a greener, fairer economy, which is influential in policymaking and social science perspectives. This paper analyses workforce attitudes towards redundancy, restructuring and transition following closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery in Grangemouth by Petroineos in 2025. It draws on interviews recorded with workers as they responded to the closure announcement in 2024. Our findings underline an unjust transition where decent, fair, previously secure and well-paid jobs were put at risk as fossil fuel workers were made redundant. Views on the closure and perceptions of injustice were shaped by Grangemouth’s historic and contemporary role in Scotland’s energy economy. Commitment to Grangemouth shaped opposition to enforced labour mobility within the oil industry and dependency on distant multinational decision-making. Workers sought justice along procedural, distributional and reparative lines, centring preservation of local employment, democratic voice, and avoiding replicating prior experiences of deindustrialisation.

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