Cromarty Rising

Today’s P&J run the story (which subject of oil leak 5), about STS being used to pay the interest on the new cruise ship berth and terminal (phase 4 expansion) – Bob Buskie put a more subtle spin on it of course – “in order to support investments such as the proposed new cruise ship berth, the Port needs to demonstrate stable and secure sources of revenue long into the future. The loss of oil tanker activity reduces the amount the Port can borrow for such projects.” Given that there is no guarantee of attracting the oil tanker business how can this be a viable business model? When questioned upon what cruise ship passengers would think of coming past oil tankers undertaking STS, a port source told us that cruise ship passengers don’t care – they are used to coming into heavily industrialised ports. If cruise passengers don’t care that much, then why do the port need to spend another £25Million on developing a cruise ship berth and “reception centre” when the cruise ship business is booming already? I’m sure a deal could be struck to go back to using the Admiralty Pier if the Port are short of space. We believe that the new “reception centre” will contain a retail complex – while that will no doubt create jobs locally over the summer, what it will actually do is encourage passengers to spend within the port and make it less likely they will spend in Invergordon and the wider economy. It would be interesting to see the plans for the “reception centre” which don’t appear to have been published.

We digress, the P&J story is here:

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/europe/126140/row-erupts-ship-ship-oil-transfer/