Time to back fracking

Sir, - On driving over the Tay Road Bridge into Dundee the other day, I was struck by the presence of three jack-up rigs parked in the river.

At more than a billion US dollars each, these are very expensive items to be lying idle

A friend in the northeast tells me that there are 17 rigs at Invergordon and many idle oilsupport vessels anchored off Aberdeen to save harbour fees.

All of this emphasises the dire state of our oil industry.

Against this background I was dismayed by the Scottish Government’s snubbing of the arrival of the first shipload of US shale gas at Grangemouth.

Ten of thousands of jobs have been lost in the oil industry.

Government revenue from oil has shrunk by around 95% over the last couple of years.

We are reduced to importing fracked shale gas from the US with the inevitable adverse effect on our balance of trade.

And yet we have been fracking for oil in the North Sea for decades, and as a result have in Scotland the skills to frack for gas onshore.

Hydrocarbons are utterly essential to our economy: to generate electricity, power our vehicles and to produce the ubiquitous plastics we depend on.

It is time the Scottish Government wised up to this fact and approved onshore fracking for shale gas. Otto Inglis. 6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.

An idle oil installation.