THE oil and gas industry faces an “avalanche” of job cuts in the coming weeks, with hundreds of workers at Grangemouth and Mossmorran going on the dole, Unite warned today.

The redundancies come after a century of refining at Grangemouth ended in April, without any plan in place for the future of the site or its workers, despite Labour’s pre-election promises and a vigorous union campaign.

Now 140 jobs at the site will be axed by contractor Altrad by the end of June. At the Mossmorran natural gas and liquids plant across the Forth, the same company plans to cut 98 posts, while other contractors Kaefer and Bilfinger plan to make 55 and 10 redundancies respectively as operator ExxonMobil cuts costs.

According to a study published by Robert Gordon University earlier this week, these redundancies could be just a taste of things to come.

The report, titled Striking the Balance: Building a Sustainable UK Offshore Energy Workforce, says that 5,000 jobs have already been lost from the sector, with the number of workers falling from 120,000 in 2023 to 115,000 last year — a trend that researchers say will accelerate.

They predict a perfect storm of redundancies, growing to a staggering 400 every fortnight, while the offshore renewables sector has “limited capacity” to absorb the skilled workers forced out of the oil and gas industry.

Challenged on the report in Holyrood, SNP Climate Action Minister Alasdair Allan said the Scottish government would “learn” from it, adding: “We hope the UK government will too.”

In London, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero insisted it had “taken rapid steps to deliver the next generation of good jobs for North Sea workers.”

But Unite general secretary Sharon Graham remained unconvinced, warning: “There is an avalanche of redundancies taking place across Scotland’s oil and gas industry. 

“The reality is that the UK and Scottish governments are failing to protect thousands of jobs. 

“Government policy is also accelerating these huge losses without any credible jobs plan in place.” 

Unite Scottish secretary Derek Thomson added: “The historic end of oil refining at Grangemouth is now causing the widely predicted domino effect, with hundreds of jobs being lost in the supply chain.

“Scotland is in serious danger of losing thousands of highly skilled jobs while creating no new opportunities in greener industries for workers to transition into.”