Ineos wants to drill UK fracking test site in attempt to show it is safe
The chemicals and energy company Ineos has offered to drill a shale gas test site in the UK to demonstrate that fracking can be done safely, as the country wrestles with high energy prices.
It comes after the government published its energy strategy, which focuses on securing UK energy supplies, as western countries consider how to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas.
The Ineos founder and chairman, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, said: “The UK is in the midst of an energy crisis with ever-increasing prices driving people into fuel poverty while giving huge sums of money to oppressive regimes.
“It’s a ridiculous situation with so much gas under our feet and we are today offering to drill a shale test site to show that a competent operator can be trusted to develop the technology safely.”
The government ended support for fracking in England in 2019, and there is also a moratorium in Scotland and Wales.
In February, more than a decade of efforts to develop fracking for shale gas seemed to be over with the decision to seal the only two horizontal drilled wells in Lancashire.
However, with the energy crisis, there has been pressure to look again at the controversial gas source, and the order to permanently seal the wells has been suspended.
The government has also commissioned a review into the science around fracking, which could pave the way to lifting the current moratorium on the process brought in over the tremors it caused.
However, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has warned that fracking would take years of exploration and development to produce commercial levels of gas.
Ineos said the moratorium was imposed because the “science behind shale was totally ignored and politicians bowed to an extreme vocal minority”.
Promoting his new energy strategy, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the government was taking a “sensible and pragmatic view” on new North Sea oil and gas and said it was important to license domestic resources rather than importing higher carbon fossil fuels from Russia and other places.
Ratcliffe said: “The UK is right to be re-examining its energy policy and to look again at the North Sea as part of the answer to our energy needs.
“But, as the US has shown, shale gas from home could make us self-sufficient in 10 years and we need to reexamine this, too.”
The Ineos chairman said the company would invite government inspectors to monitor the site, and make it good if the science shows there are problems.
“But if, as we believe, the opposite is true, we would ask that the government looks again at shale gas, which would allow the UK to benefit from its own resources, massively reduce the cost
of energy and ensure our long-term energy independence,” Ratcliffe said.
The move comes amid wider calls to end the fossil fuel era to tackle dangerous climate change, and Ineos said it was “part of the growing renewables revolution”.
The chemicals group added: “But renewable technology is not yet reliable enough to take over and the UK will need gas for the next 30 years as it goes through the energy transition.”