North Sea – claim

Factfile

of shale so we can’t do the seismic and we can’t drill the exploratory wells and neither of those things involve fracking. “But that’s at least a two to three-year process and that really is just doing the scientific work to ascertain how much shale gas or shale oil is in that Scottish basin and if it is there if it’s producible because you have to be able to get it out. The pressures have to be such that if you drill a hole into the shale you can pull the gas out and that’s a two or three-year piece of work.

“That clearly would have be done in parallel with the Scottish Government doing its homework on the environment and safety issues. They’ve clearly chosen not to do that.

“We’ve had all the dialogue we’ve been allowed, we’ve been quite clear on our views, we don’t think fracking really is any different to conventional oil and gas in terms of the safety and environmental issues and obviously Scotland is very comfortable with conventional oil and gas. It’s no different really but for some reason there’s a vocal minority that have got excited about it and it’s difficult in a way for ourselves, who are quite rational and have got a lot of exposure to what’s happening in America, so we see very clearly that shale gas has been very successful in America, it’s been very safe and friendly overall.

“It’s had one or two issues but then every industry has had one or two issues so we see the immense impact it has had on the US economy and we can’t understand why the government is not open minded to that in Scotland.”

carrying shale gas from the US, arrives in the Firth of Forth yesterday