AN SNP MP is calling for a former Highland fabrication yard to be resurrected to decommission oil rigs like the stricken Transocean Winner, which ran aground off the Isle of Lewis last month.
Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP Ian Blackford is urging ministers to help the Kishorn Port, on the northwest coast which employed 3,000 workers making oil platforms in the 1970s, along with other Scottish yards, to secure work worth billions of pounds to scrap rigs.
Blackford and other supporters of the idea believe the move would give Scotland’s economy a much-needed boost and provide jobs to oil workers who have been made redundant because of the decline in the value of North Sea oil.
Blackford said: “Scottish yards must be given the opportunity to compete for oil and gas decommissioning work.
“The value of North Sea decommissioning will run to several billion pounds over the coming decades and we need to make sure that Scottish-based companies and workers can benefit.
“There is no better facility to engage in decommissioning than the Kishorn Port, [which] is still in operation today and has a unique large dry dock facility that is ideally suited to oil and gas decommissioning.
“Such developments are necessary if the Highlands are to thrive and prospers.”
The Transocean Winner drilling rig was destined for a yard in Turkey to be decommissioned when a tow line broke and it ran aground on Lewis.
Blackford said this exposed the risk involved in shipping rigs as far away as Turkey and it was safer to carry out the work in Scotland.
The Kishorn dry dock was used to build the 600,000-tonne Ninian Central platform, then the largest movable object ever created by man, but it was closed due to bankruptcy in 1987 and used again to help construct the Skye Bridge. Ferguson Transport now use the quay as a port for fish farming supplies, forestry and other products.
Transocean said a decision on the final destination of the rig has still to be made.
The Scottish Government said they and other agencies were working with Scottish ports and harbours including Kishorn, to understand their capabilities.
A spokeswoman said: “We recognise that decommissioning, along with recovering the substantial oil and gas resources remaining in the North Sea, and offshore renewables, has the potential to deliver enormous economic benefits for the whole country.”
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