Meeting of the Parliament 18 February 2026 [Draft]
ExxonMobil’s Fife ethylene plant closed on 2 February. Some of the skilled workforce have already left Scotland; others, with the support of their unions and the partnership action for continuing employment initiative, are trying to make sense of their future options.
Fife communities already bear deep scars of unmanaged industrial decline. They have been here before, when the Tories shut the coal mines. Despite the operation of Mossmorran for 20 years longer than its original lifespan, there has been no proactive planning for transition or reinvestment. That is a reckless, head-in-the-sand approach. As the Just Transition Commission has stated, what we are seeing at Mossmorran is
“another major disorderly and unjust industrial closure”
in Scotland.
When I met ExxonMobil executives in 2022 to discuss my report on a just transition plan, they were bullish. They told me that, even if North Sea gas production were to decline, that would not worry them, because they could always import ethane feedstock to keep Mossmorran open. Four years on from that meeting, the announcement to close was sudden and brutal. Contractor workers were simply locked out of their workplace on the same day.
Although ExxonMobil tries to blame high taxation, it paid out some $37 billion to shareholders in 2025. Let us be clear: it is cutting and running from Fife, earlier than planned, with—so far—no industrial legacy for communities and workers who deserve so much better.