WESTMINSTER and Holyrood need to take a "crisis management approach" to the slump in the oil price, which is threatening thousands of jobs in the North Sea oil and gas industry, trade union leaders have insisted.

 

The call from the RMT, which represents offshore workers, came as Labour demanded the Scottish Government hold a new inquiry into the sector and produce fresh analysis of the effect a near halving of the oil price to around $60 a barrel is having on the industry, which employs 375,000 people across the UK, half in Scotland.

Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, following his first meeting with Nicola Sturgeon since taking up his new role, urged the First Minister to set out her administration's latest assessment of the tax cut needed to save the jobs of thousands of Scottish oil workers "as a matter of urgency".

The SNP Government insists it is doing everything in its power to help boost the oil and gas industry and has urged the UK Government to start taking its own responsibility for helping the sector recover from the current crisis.

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, admitted the grave situation facing the industry was "deeply worrying" but argued the tax incentives proposed by the UK Government together with collaboration between it, the industry and the regulator, would help the sector weather the current financial storm.

In a separate development, the RMT called on MPs and MSPs to do all they could to help an industry one senior executive claimed this week was "close to collapse".

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: "In the wake of the current price slump, we are demanding Westminster and the Scottish Parliament adopt a crisis management approach to ensure sustained production, maintenance of infrastructure, retention of skills and a robustly regulated regime in the future.

"If immediate action isn't taken, then we risk turning today's crisis into longer term damage that would threaten the very core of our offshore industry."

Meantime, Gordon Wilson, the former Nationalist leader, warned against over-reaction, saying a collapse in the oil price was nothing new and that it would recover.

"I warn the SNP Government - which has little control anyway because of the No vote in the referendum - not to panic. It should certainly not call on the UK Government to reduce oil taxation or give any more generous tax allowances. These would have no impact against a 50 per cent or more drop in oil prices."

However, leading oil industry figure Sir Ian Wood yesterday (fri) dismissed warnings it is is close to collapse are "well over the top and far too dramatic."