Letters / Who pays for the clean-up if Veri Energy fails?
Last weekend I attended one of the Ocean REFuel workshops in Shetland. They were billed as open public sessions to gather community perspectives on hydrogen, ammonia, and offshore renewables.
I left with more questions than I arrived with, and not the kind the organisers intended.
The session was run by researchers from the universities of Bath, Cardiff, and Strathclyde; the same Strathclyde institution whose Centre for Energy Policy published, just weeks earlier, a policy brief calling for urgent government investment in Veri Energy’s plans for Sullom Voe Terminal. The session and the policy brief are BOTH outputs of the UKRI-funded Ocean REFuel research programme.
What was presented at the workshop? No technical case for ammonia production at scale. No economic modelling of what such a facility means for Shetland. No analysis of the societal disruption associated with industrial ammonia eg. the hazard zones, shipping impacts, land use. There was no guarantee whatsoever that the opinions expressed in the room would be represented in any subsequent proposal or planning document.
We were not consulted. We were observed.
There is a difference between gathering public intelligence to inform a pre-formed commercial plan and genuinely consulting a community about its future. What I attended was the former dressed as the latter.
This matters because Veri Energy’s proposal to repurpose Sullom Voe Terminal carries financial risks the Shetland public has not been told about. Published legal analysis confirms that as an onshore terminal, SVT already operates under a weaker liability regime than offshore rigs. Past owners, including BP and Shell, are not bound in perpetuity to fund the cleanup in the same way they would be for an offshore installation.If the Veri venture fails in ten years and the site is no longer classified as petroleum infrastructure, the remediation costs could fall to the landlord: Shetland Islands Council.
We are not being asked if we want this. We are being softened up to accept it.
Before any planning permissions, lease amendments, or public subsidies are granted, Shetland deserves straight answers: Who pays for the clean-up if Veri Energy fails? Has the Council secured a legal guarantee that the original oil companies remain liable? Has anyone costed the alternative — a funded, industry-paid decommissioning programme that would employ local workers for a decade?
These are not anti-green nor anti-progress questions. These are basic public finance questions from anyone who was concerned by what happened at Mossmorran in February. Oil companies have a significant track record of trying to avoid cleaning duties.
We must demand transparency and accountability from the energy industry, otherwise Shetland Islands Council could be sleepwalking into a huge decommissioning bill for the Sullom Voe Terminal.
Rod Read
Nesbister
