The Scottish Greens would never seek to trivialise oil industry job losses, the party’s co-convener Patrick Harvie said, as he criticised “absurd misquotes” which he said misrepresent its position on the issue.
Mr Harvie was responding to media reports the Greens want the North Sea Oil sector to be wound down, with offshore workers becoming “lumberjacks”.
The Greens had put forward a motion for debate at Holyrood calling for “a transition away from Scotland’s current over-reliance on fossil fuels”.
A managed decline of North Sea oil and gas extraction could be an opportunity to capture the skills and experience of energy workers and create new employment in more secure alternatives such as renewables, decommissioning and sustainable forestry, the party said.
Mr Harvie said some in the media had “chosen to take absurd misquotes in an attempt to misrepresent the Green position on this issue”.
“Nobody will take the issue of job losses in the north-east trivially, it is a serious matter that impacts on communities in that region and our wider economy,” he told MSPs.
“Even those of us who have long argued that we are over-reliant on the fossil fuel industries would never argue that the impact of job losses on this scale is something trivial.”
He went on to argue the North Sea oil industry – which has suffered from plummeting oil prices recently – is facing a “long-term decline in production”.
Mr Harvie called for the Scottish Government to work with staff, trade unions and the industry to develop a transition plan.
Energy minister Fergus Ewing said: “Many, many people are engaged in work where oil and gas and renewables go hand in hand. Expertise in one area lends itself to gaining success in the other.
“Without all of us supporting the work that companies in Scotland do right now, for 2016 and for the foreseeable future, then we won’t see companies go into transition, we’ll see companies go into administration because that’s what happens if the Green recipe is adopted.”
Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser, convener of Holyrood’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, said Mr Harvie had delivered a “remarkably downbeat and depressing view of a sector which is still of great importance to the Scottish economy”.
He said: “I am well aware of the decline in the sector with some 65,000 jobs lost so far and new job losses being announced almost on a weekly basis.
“But we also know that the nature of the industry is cyclical, and if you look back at changes in the oil price over the last 40 years you see that prices go up and down.
“While none of us can accurately predict the future, what we can do is expect that there will be a recovery sooner or later, there will be an industry to support it in coming decades, and our role today is to ensure that the industry gets the support it needs in the interim.”
Labour wealth creation spokesman Lewis Macdonald said the oil and gas industry is “one of the pillars of the Scottish economy”.
He said: “Whatever the future prospects for North Sea oil, it is not a bonus and it is not a optional extra. It is of critical importance to us all and today it is under threat.”
He called on the Scottish Government to produce an urgent and detailed assessment of the impact of the low oil price and the strength of the Scottish economy.