Ban on fracking could have cost country billions
SNP posturing on fracking has already cost the country dear, Ineos has warned.
The energy giant said Scotland would now be forced to import technology developed elsewhere, including in England, as it gets left behind.
Yesterday, SNP delegates queued up to attack drilling for shale gas in a debate on the Scottish Government moratorium, with calls for a permanent ban only narrowly defeated by party moderates.
Not one member spoke in favour of fracking and Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing was conspicuous by his absence.
However, speaking to the Scottish Daily Mail, Tom Pickering, shale director of I neos, said he believed SNP ministers were willing to be persuaded.
But he attacked them for dithering after their own scientific advisers recommended fracking should go ahead, and said any environmental consequences can be mitigated.
‘It needs to be sooner rather than later. There is a general need for certainty,’ he warned.
He refused to be drawn on how much fracking could be worth to Scotland but sites south of the Border, where analysis has taken place, are estimated to be worth billions.
Operators have said the gas extracted in Scotland could heat homes for 46 years. Analyst Ernst & Young has estimated it could create 64,000 jobs UKwide, including about 10,000 in Scotland.
The SNP has put off making a decision on fracking and Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) until 2017 at the earliest, after next year’s Scottish elections, to avoid a voter backlash.
Nicola Sturgeon has held secret meetings with Jim Rat- cliffe, chairman of Ineos, and Mr Ewing is thought to be open minded on fracking.
Scotland f aces a growing energy crisis, with Longannet power station set to close in March, plans for a new station at Cockenzie abandoned, and no plans to replace nuclear plants at Torness and Hunterston, both of which are due to close by 2023.
Ministers may need to embrace fracking to plug the gap.
Mr Pickering said: ‘I think what they’ve said is they can be per- suaded on the basis of science and fact.’
The Scottish Government has announced a consultation and evidence-gathering that will run until 2017, and Ineos estimates it would then take two years to be ready to frack. That would see drills enter the ground, probably starting in Falkirk, in 2019.
However, by then Scotland will already be playing catch up. Mr Pickering said: ‘I think actually the point at which you become disadvantaged is the here and now. The investment is here to be made.
‘We chose not to develop a wind farm manufacturing industry, did not get out of the blocks first, and now we import from Germany and Denmark.
‘Fracking could still take place here but the technology we use will be imported.’
Scots Tories urged the SNP to stop listening to an ‘ill-informed mob’ but environmental campaigners welcomed the party’s support for a moratorium.
Alex Johnstone, Tory MSP, said: ‘Ineos’s observation that the SNP are dithering is spot on. With Scotland’s oil and gas industry at its lowest point in years, the Scottish Government holds in its hand the trigger for the second oil and gas boom once predicted by Alex Salmond, only this time the SNP are under the control of an illinformed mob who would rather return to the Stone Age.’
‘Sooner rather than later’