Scottish and English ports can still compete when it comes to supporting offshore oil & gas and the upcoming Round 3 of offshore wind power – and also work associated with the decommissioning of oil & gas facilities.
While Forth Ports chief executive Charles Hammond has kept his private views to himself, there is clearly relief that it’s “business as usual” for the group, and he says both Scottish ports and Tilbury will continue to play an important role in the continued growth of the whole UK economy.
Forth Ports owns the Port of Dundee on the Firth of Tay, and six ports on the Firth of Forth – Leith, Grangemouth, Rosyth, Methil, Burntisland and Kirkcaldy. Among a number of interesting investment announcements recently is chemical company INEOS’s project to build a new import terminal for storing and processing ethane from shale gas imported from the US, while at Leith the pipe-coating plant operated by Bredero Shaw continues to win major new contracts from the offshore sector.
At Dundee, meanwhile, there’s a focus on offshore end-of-life work. Dundee Decommissioning has been set up by Robertson Metal Recycling, to specialise in marine/oil rig decommissioning and recycling at a purpose-built decommissioning base within the port.
“A huge number of people are likely to be involved in North Sea decommissioning work from 2015 onwards,” says Hammond. “We are well positioned in the supply chain and expect to see that work at both Leith and Dundee.”
A couple of years ago, a study by the Transport Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University, examined the development of port-centric logistics, dry ports and offshore logistics hubs as possible strategies for overcoming what its authors called Scotland’s “double peripherality” – referring to Scotland’s status both physically and institutionally.
Scotland’s low accessibility was reflected in the limited share of Scottish unitised freight traffic coming through the country’s own ports, said the report, which highlighted overreliance on English ports and the lack of government initiatives to promote direct links by sea.
“Peripheral regions and nations within the EU require a range of transport options for access to the economic centre of the European continent. Yet for market access, Scotland relies heavily on maritime services via remote southern seaports, with the result that the majority of Scotland’s trade travels overland through England,” said Jason Monios, representing TRI Napier on the EU-funded Dryport project.
Forth Ports has indeed been building more and more port-centric warehousing at the Port of Grangemouth, particularly for the whisky industry.
However, there are now fears that a key direct link with Europe – the DFDS freight ferry service between Rosyth and Zeebrugge – is at risk. That is because EU’s upcoming 0.1% sulphur cap in Emission Control Areas (ECAs) will hit longer routes hardest, with the additional costs of using low-sulphur fuel from January having a much greater impact than on shorter routes further south.
Faced with higher surcharges, many customers are expected to drive further to board less expensive crossings. It is, I suppose, another consequence of Scotland’s peripherality.
Hammond has written to the Scottish government voicing his concerns about the EU legislation and the threat to the DFDS service’s viability.
Shipping is still the better form of transport environmentally, despite any emissions, compared to road transport, he says. “We should be cutting road miles, not artificially increasing them. This is a very bad, retrograde step and the danger is that we lose the Rosyth service.”
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Seatrade, a trading name of Informa Markets (UK) Limited. Add Seatrade Maritime News to your Google News feed.
