Grangemouth Oil Refinery to Close .... My own theory about it

a reply to: bigyin

I do agree that it seems strange that there will not be any oil refineries in Scotland.
But to be fair I don't think you can blame this on preferential treatment for England, its a commercial decision made by a private company.

I haven't really looked into the financial justification for shutting Grangemouth refinery whilst keeping the one's in England open.

Personally I'd rather see the UK Oil industry and all Utilities nationalised but I accept I'm very much in the minority.

a reply to: Freeborn

Grangemouth is a disaster waiting to happen , it is needing totally rebuilt as most of it is now rotten and well beyond economical repair .

Add in the fact that it is surrounded by a fair size town of 80k people and with all the knowledge of how bad the air is surrounding places like this on human health , there was even a massive debate when they built a new football stadium years ago as they said it was in the blast zone if anything went wrong ,

You should visit there when they are flaring off , the windows of the houses shake it is like a scene from dantes inferno .

Plus any terrorist can have a field day there as you drive right through the middle of the refinery on the way to Edinburgh

a reply to: Freeborn
Ok so it's a commercial decision. Edinburgh Airport is owned by a Spanish company. Suppose it decided to just close the airport and operate from say Newcastle instead. Forcing everyone in Scotland to have to travel to Newcastle to get on a plane. Would that be ok ? Just shrug shoulders and go oh well it's out of our hands, it's a private company, can do what they want.

No it's not ok. But is has been happening to many Scottish industries over many years. Being closed and moved down south or abroad. Happens to North England as well. It's not ok.

Some industries are just too important to be owned by private companies who can do this.

I would put oil refining as one of those. Should be state owned. Same with airports, hospitals, schools, all sorts of very important things that are part of a countries infrastructure

a reply to: bigyin

I'm not 'shrugging my shoulders' at all, just pointing out its a commercial decision.

Yes, Scotland gets # on from a very big height, but no more so than North East England......probably less so in fact.
Doesn't make it alright and I certainly don't agree with it.

As I said, I'd prefer to see a lot of these industries nationalised again but that's very much a forbidden word nowadays.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Grangemouth is a disaster waiting to happen , it is needing totally rebuilt as most of it is now rotten and well beyond economical repair .

Aye, it would be a big bastard if it went pop that's for sure.

My cousins used to stay there, it was quite the sight at night watching the Gas flare.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: stonerwilliam

Grangemouth is a disaster waiting to happen , it is needing totally rebuilt as most of it is now rotten and well beyond economical repair .

Aye, it would be a big bastard if it went pop that's for sure.

My cousins used to stay there, it was quite the sight at night watching the Gas flare.

I was in a dudes house there one night having a smoke and could not believe that people were living so close to that facility , His living room windows were vibrating like crazy that night when they were flaring of it felt like a scene from a mad max movie but worse , I knocked back a job there after hearing about the health effects that people were having who worked there .

I was in a house built in the 30s stoned out of my box and the guy showed me a paper cutting of him and his mum at the front of their house with a diagram of the mine shaft underneath it , one of the deepest known in central Scotland 600 + feet with just a 20-30 foot plug of concrete at the top . They lost the records in the 60s to a fire/flood and only knew about it because a workman under the floor had seen a plague while rewiring the place , I never went back in that house .

I still cannot believe a road runs through the middle of the facility any nutter with a gun or granade could cause chaos?

a reply to: stonerwilliam

The house i was in was miles away from the main facility built up on the hills.

Mad council estate type place full of old tenements.

But you could see the big plume of fire stretching into the sky waving about a wee bit in the wind.

Quite spectacular really.

As to the effects on the local environment, aye i don't imagine they are very nice.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: stonerwilliam

The house i was in was miles away from the main facility built up on the hills.

Mad council estate type place full of old tenements.

But you could see the big plume of fire stretching into the sky waving about a wee bit in the wind.

Quite spectacular really.

As to the effects on the local environment, aye i don't imagine they are very nice.

I ken that area well bud Polmont ? or west quarter I knew a few lads from there .

The first time I saw that site going full steam it seemed like a scene from hell , I really did wonder wtf I was doing there and friends who worked there warned me about the health affects of being there and how quickly some guys died who took jobs .

I stayed near the wheel and used to look down there when the wind was blowing and they were going like mad with the flaring , the funny thing was when they were building the new football ground all the fuss about it being in the blast zone if anything went wrong , stuff all the people who lived in the town .

Small planet Andy

a reply to: stonerwilliam

All sounds a bit like Teesside.
Its not called Smogsville for nothing.

Honestly, you can literally see the smog covering the whole area when you are approaching the place.
Flare stacks everywhere.....quite a sight at night time.

Its hardly surprising that the lowest life expectancy in the UK are in Scotland and North East England.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Small planet indeed stonerwilliam.

People will always come second to heavy industry down to the fact that they need one more than the other.

We have got a lot better on that score i suppose but at the end of the day its money that talks, and the rest simply do the walk.

a reply to: Freeborn

I worked in that area decades ago in my gippo shopfitting years , All these retail parks etc look the same countrywide and we're owned by the church of England even in Scotland , I came across health studies long ago about how bad living near those refineries is to human health especially a pregnant womans !.

I went to the Redcar plant when I was 11 or 12 in a lorry with a family member and to this day I am still amazed at how he backed a trailer unit into a bay when we were picking up I beams for the oil rig yards here , without stopping to judge he threw the thing in reverse and went flying into the bay , when I got out to look at how close it all was I could not put my finger between the wall and the hook for tying down on either side , still impresses the hell out of me that .

It is the same in all these countries go outside the capital cities and it is like the land that time forgot

a reply to: andy06shake

It is a really small planet Andy , My first time working in London in the 80s within a few hours I came across 4 people from my wee village area with a population of 3k .

The shopfitting world was like a big family who knew everyone , we really were like gypsies staying at a place for 4 -8 weeks and moving on and where all the good and bad digs were , I doff my cap to those guys I met for their work ethic , a lot of guys had left school at 16 and never been in a brew office in their life or been out of work and they were all in their late 50s then , some guys never had a day of In 8 plus months , most did 3 months then went home for a week , I was burned out after a few years of that

a reply to: stonerwilliam

It's only getting smaller mate nevermind a hell of a lot more crowded.

My dad was a shopfitter back in the 90s, man was a great chippy.

Good money in the game back then i seem to recall.

Wish i had chosen to learn a lot more from him now that he's gone.

Feeling a bit burned out myself to be honest today, just life the universe, and everything else in between. LoL

a reply to: andy06shake

My dad is also a wood butcher Andy .


It was rock star wages back in the day some people were on without realising it ikyn , I was gobsmacked one day when I found out that I had replaced a famous musician of a Welsh band who had worked with the firm I was with , It took them years after they started to get the money through so they could quit the 7 to 7 lifestyle .

I thought the lads were pulling my leg when they told me this one night in the boozer after work when I put a song of theirs on the jute box , I was handed a phone by a very straight shooter who let me talk to him , me being totally blitzed and forgetting that it was 40 pence a minute back then went on to have a one and a half hour conversation with the dude .

It was only when Steve got back from his 3 days of and showed me the phone bill and let me speak to him again about what we talked about that night that things fell into place , I get the blankety blank check book and pen when I hit the drink due to a liver condition
www.amazon.co.uk...

m.youtube.com...

Not everything in life is as black and white as it seems Andy , 00 E 55 is black Kv 55 is a tomb in Egypt / khem ..

Theres no underlying conspiracy about closing Grangemouth, the owners had threatened for years to do this each time the workers threatened strike action for wages.

the fact is, labour is cheaper elsewhere and the UK is losing all its industry to this. Just look at TATA steel also closing.

Grangemouth my home town, I know a lot about the refinery and how it has changed over the years
as many of my family and friends have worked there for decades.
My uncle John was a firefighter in the BP at the site and we'd often get school visits to the BP to see what it was all about. Also in highschool we;d get a lot of trips for chemistry class. to the BP and ICI

I remember then they built the hyrdrocracker and would often marvel at the size of the flare stack when they burned it off on a shutdown I think we tried to measure its height in comparison to a block of flats and it must have been about 4 stories high, I remember when a man nearly fell to his death and had to be airlifted to the nearby inchyra park luckily he was wearing a harness and was dangling on the side of the tower upside down. I also remember the various times parts of it exploded.

I dont suffer any known health affects from living there and neither do my school friends or their children so who knows. Nearly all of my school friends still live there with their families and I try to visit as often as I can.
although I joke that we all had our extra limbs removed before we left the town.

the port of Grangemouth where my grandfather and father worked until retirement is now to be a freeport
no longer to be owned by forth ports plc. But If I recall they are keeping the terminal where ships can unload the fuel or other processing elements that were brought in or went out by ship.
The port also holds scotlands largest container terminal

Im sure that Ineos would be better of investing heavily into modifications to allow for processing of other fuel sources
such as LNG to keep the plant operating just as shell did with most of their petrochemical plants, if it were to shut down the site couldnt be used for at least another 100 years due to the industrial contamination.

always baffled me why the residents of grangemouth had to pay the same fuel prices given the proximity to the only refinery. but profit is profit.

Grangemouth being built initially for the canal /shipping industry to serve as an industrial town and many thought that would be the end when the canal closed etc, but it was then redeveloped for the refinery etc
so I assume it will do the same , just redevelop for another industry.

Grangemouth's population is no where near 80K
its closer to 17-18K

As for the terrorists and boness road, the BP /Ineos site was surrounded by an 18ft high electrical fence since
9/11 i think
I remember taking a flying lesson with my grandfather from Edinburgh turnhouse on my 16th birthday to fly over grangemouth and there is a no fly zone over the whole site
Im sure there is also RAF on stand by should anyone show up on radar as being on a questionable flight path

I remember the debate surrounding the new Falkirk stadium after brockville was closed , and that Westfield was too close the BP for the players in case of a blast , then what is the town of grangemouth doing so close?
makes you wonder.

I was reassured there are redundancies and shut downs all built into the whole thing in case of such events.

Anyway nice to talk about my home town for a bit

the place stinks though since they opened the biomass plant at the port, and the proximity to the recycling plant at polmont hill means lots of flies in the summer months.
Also the smell that comes from the ICI plant sometimes makes you feel queezy or gives you a sore head.

I remember my 18th birthday and I had an empty , and we all decided to leave the house to goto rendevouz down at la porte precinct , we all walked out my house on dalgrain road to see a huge mass of purple foam coming through the trees across the road from the ICI plant.
Minutes later 4 white vans showed up and guys in hazmat jumped out and started setting up water hoses to wash it all away.
truly bizarre

I kind of miss it and I kind of dont

a reply to: sapien1982


small world .

I must be getting the population totals mixed up with Falkirk ? But there is not a lot between the two places when you are driving , I actually forgot about the ICI plant there but with dementia anything is possible .

I stayed past Tammy hill up near the wheel 20 + years ago when it was new for a few years , I used to love it down there for the walks you could go on and all the canal paths , but that is one weird area up there and I left , it was only a few months ago there was a ufo programme on television about that area and I was shocked to hear it is one of the worlds most reported places for UFOs , yet I was walking to Bonnybridge regularly with the girlfriend and dog and saw nada but I did hear something out of a sci- fi movie one January at 5 am go right over my flat .

Handy having family at the docks especially if they were getting the monthly sheet for drinks we had a family member work at the Dalmore distillery and he had 5 gallon barrels in his garage of the stuff ikyn , no wonder he is dead .

I vaguely remember now hearing get about the cracker blowing up but it must have been before I stayed there in Bonnyhill .

Strange how many Scottish people you come across on a American website

a reply to: stonerwilliam

aye i totally remember my maw and da taking us to Falkirk town hall in the early 90's i think it was either 1990 or 1991
for a talk by professional UFOlogists not sure if that was even a term then
anyways they had a big talk at the Falkirk town hall and the place was mobbed every seat and people at the back standing to listen to these experts talk about UFO;s at Bonnybridge and show pictures etc

such a strange time , but was really interesting of course as a young boy i was right into it truly amazed me that aliens would be visiting Scotland near our home .

I think that the thing with us Scots , for such a wee nation we are literally everywhere on earth
hope you had a gid burns night
Sláinte mhath

a reply to: Scofeild618

....suggesting that the impending referendum on Scottish independence......

Err....what 'impending referendum'?

Oh.....its SPAM.