Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-39594

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 15 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact on the national gas transmission system of any unplanned shutdown at the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant, and what contingencies it has identified to mitigate any such disruption.

Question reference: S6W-39596

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 15 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what representations it has made to the UK Government regarding the security of supply and future operation of the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant since 1 January 2020, and what the outcomes were of any such representations.

Question reference: S6W-39599

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has received from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on (a) the number of flaring events and their cumulative duration and (b) the causes of flaring at the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant in each of the last three calendar years.

Question reference: S6W-39600

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what enforcement notices or other regulatory actions the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has issued in relation to the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant since 1 January 2022, and what remedial steps were required in each case.

Question reference: S6W-39607

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what contingency arrangements it has in place to support households that are reliant on (a) heating oil and (b) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the event of supply disruptions during winter 2025-26.

Question reference: S6W-39595

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government when its ministers last met with (a) Shell UK Limited, (b) ExxonMobil, (c) the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and (d) the Health and Safety Executive to discuss the Mossmorran complex, and what issues were discussed on each occasion.

Question reference: S6W-39597

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has received on which upstream fields supply feedstock directly to the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant, and how many tonnes each field supplied in financial years (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24, (c) 2024-25 and (d) 2025 to date.

Question reference: S6W-39603

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 6 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many domestic properties rely on (a) heating oil and (b) liquefied petroleum gas as their primary heating fuel, broken down by local authority area.

The most recently available Local Authority analysis from the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS) is from 2017 to 2019

Table 1 shows the estimated number of dwellings that use heating oil, or LPG as their primary heating fuel, broken down by Local Authority.

Table 1: Estimated number of households using LPG and Oil as primary heating fuel 2017-19.

	LPG	Oil	Total Households
Aberdeen City	*	[c]	108,000
Aberdeenshire	3,000	26,000	111,000
Angus	2,000	5,000	54,000
Argyll and Bute	2,000	6,000	42,000
Clackmannanshire	*	0	24,000
Dumfries and Galloway	2,000	13,000	70,000
Dundee City	[c]	[c]	70,000
East Ayrshire	[c]	2,000	55,000
East Dunbartonshire	*	*	46,000
East Lothian	*	2,000	46,000
East Renfrewshire	[c]	*	39,000
Edinburgh, City of	[c]	1,000	236,000
Na h-Eileanan Siar	1,000	6,000	13,000
Falkirk	*	1,000	72,000
Fife	*	4,000	168,000
Glasgow City	[c]	[c]	293,000
Highland	3,000	26,000	109,000
Inverclyde	1,000	[c]	38,000
Midlothian	1,000	1,000	39,000
Moray	1,000	7,000	43,000
North Ayrshire	*	1,000	64,000
North Lanarkshire	[c]	2,000	152,000
Orkney Islands	[c]	4,000	10,000
Perth and Kinross	2,000	9,000	68,000
Renfrewshire	[c]	[c]	86,000
Scottish Borders	1,000	7,000	54,000
Shetland Islands	*	3,000	10,000
South Ayrshire	1,000	4,000	52,000
South Lanarkshire	1,000	6,000	146,000
Stirling	1,000	2,000	39,000
West Dunbartonshire	*	*	43,000
West Lothian	*	1,000	78,000
Scotland	25,000	139,000	2,479,000

Notes

1.The SHCS is a sample survey and therefore all figures are estimates which lie at the midpoint of a confidence interval which depends primarily on sample size.

2.A * indicates suppression has been applied where the base sample is too small to report (below 30 cases) or the estimate represents 2 or fewer sampled households.

3.A [c] indicates 0 sampled cases.

4.Figures may not sum due to rounding.

The Scottish Government publishes local authority analysis using a three-year pooled data set from the SHCS, to ensure sufficient sample sizes. As set out in the Scottish House Condition Survey 2023 Key Findings Report (available at Scottish House Condition Survey: 2023 Key Findings - gov.scot) the lack of SHCS data for 2020 and the enforced changes for 2021 means that the next set of local authority estimates will be for the 2022 to 2024 period, scheduled for publication in early 2026.

Question reference: S6W-39606

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 28 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government when its ministers last met with (a) the UK and Ireland Fuel Distributors Association, (b) Liquid Gas UK, (c) major suppliers of heating oil, (d) major suppliers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and (e) consumer-advice bodies, to discuss the rural off-gas-grid heating market, and what issues were discussed on each occasion.

Question reference: S6W-39604

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 28 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact on levels of fuel poverty in rural communities of the recent price trends of (a) heating oil and (b) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and what measures it has identified to mitigate any such impact.

	2024	2023	2022
No of Flaring Events	238	275	202
Total Duration (hours)	1244	1934	502