IT’S being promoted as part of the “renaissance” of Grangemouth, and Ineos boss Jim Ratcliffe has said shale gas could be the saviour of the UK economy as the North Sea approaches the last decade of its life.

The founder and chairman of the petrochemicals giant made his remarks as the UK’s first shipment of 27,500 cubic metres of ethane arrived at the refinery – but failed to dock because of high winds – from US shale fields in one of the company’s Dragon-class ships, and as campaigners stepped up calls for a ban on fracking.

Ratcliffe blamed a loud “vocal minority” for the message about the benefits of the process not getting through to the Scottish Government.

“The North Sea has brought a huge amount of investment over the last 40 years,” Ratcliffe told journalists. “In 10 years’ time you’ll have less than 20 per cent of peak production in the North Sea. The North Sea is finished in 10 years’ time. So what are your unique selling points (USPs) for British manufacturing … why is anybody going to invest in the UK in 10 years if you don’t have shale gas?

“There’s no science behind the arguments the vocal minority are making.

America is much more regulated than the UK and they’ve drilled a million wells and it’s been very successful, they’re not polluting things and I don’t understand it other than the vocal minority makes more noise than the majority who are in favour of shale in every survey that we do.”

Ratcliffe said unconventional gas extraction could transform communities blighted by a collapse in manufacturing, as has happened in the US. Shale gas would replace dwindling North Sea supplies and secure essential raw material for Grangemouth, supporting some 10,000 jobs for 20 years, he said.

“One of my great concerns about the UK economy is the collapse in manufacturing,” Ratcliffe went on.

“I think saving Grangemouth is a brick in the wall to arresting that decline, but maybe shale gas also has the ability to reverse that decline. Shale gas has absolutely transformed the United States. There’s immense levels of investment there.

“There’s clearly a lot of shale in the UK as there is in the United States, and there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t do the same things to the UK manufacturing industry as it has done in America.”

However, Friends of the Earth Scotland (FoES) hit out at “environmental damage” caused by fracking in the US. Head of campaigns Mary Church said: “Setting aside the devastating impacts of fracking, the climate consequences of extracting yet more fossil fuels are utterly disastrous.

“We urge the Scottish Government to act swiftly to ban fracking and start planning seriously for a fair tran- sition to a low-carbon economy across all sectors. Fracking should not happen here in Scotland, or anywhere.”

MSP Mark Ruskell, the Scottish Greens’ climate and energy spokesman, said: “If we want to guarantee a future for Grangemouth we should be investing in its conversion to syn- thetic fuels from renewable resources.

Amid today’s PR puff from Ineos there has been no mention of climate change. The facts are clear. We need to start leaving fossil fuels in the ground, not go drilling for more.”

However, Gary Smith, GMB regional secretary for Scotland, retorted: “Hundreds of millions have been invested in Grangemouth. Tens of thousands of jobs depend on the site, calling for imported fracked gas to be stopped is campaigning for mass unemployment in central Scotland.”

“Instead of indulging in King Canute stuff, the Greens should be entering in a real world debate about where we get our gas from.”

The UK Labour Party has followed Scottish Labour in backing a ban on fracking, but Ratcliffe argued: “A lot of the heartland voters for the Labour Party are in those very industrial areas that are rather like Pittsburgh 10 years ago. They’re not in great shape. Shale has got this ability to transform these industrial communities.

“If you look at the Scottish economy, it’s running at a substantial deficit and that’s not healthy.”

Ratcliffe said he understood “the political sensitivities” faced by the Scottish Government, which has a moratorium in place on fracking, but added: “Our message was ‘why don’t you let us at least do the exploration so we can absolutely identify whether there is produce-able sensible quantities of shale gas in Scotland whilst you do your evaluation in parallel?’.

“It might be in three years’ time we find that it’s either insufficient in quantity or it’s not at a pressure where it will come out. That was always our argument, but they haven’t gone down that road because of political sensitivities, which is a shame.”

Industry hub’ plan for Grangemouth

INEOS unveiled the next phase of its plan for the “renaissance” of Grangemouth yesterday, as its first “Dragon ship” arrived with ethane gas from the US. The company announced its intention to create a “chemical cluster” at the site, and that it is working with Scottish Enterprise to find new firms to join “a manufacturing hub for Scotland”.

A newly-completed four-storey office block will enable the 450 people who work for INEOS O&P UK to be located in the same building for the first time. Not surprisingly, the vision is built on US ethane “feedstock”, which the company said will offer a competitive advantage to interested parties. INEOS O&P CEO John McNally said: “With the advent of US shale gas, we are delighted that not only will the site be profitable in 2016, but that we are in a position to extend these benefits to chemical manufacturing and industry in general. “Grangemouth has the potential to provide the base and incubator for new manufacturing enterprises that can use our ethane feedstock, world class facilities and energy supply to compete with the best in the world.”