It’s time to challenge SNP fracking myths

THE SNP’s ban on fracking appeared rooted in superstition and dogma rather than scientific fact and its consultation on the issue – 99 per cent of 60,000 respondents against – looked like something from totalitarian Russia.

The moratorium was a sop to an antibusiness and anti-science clique, many of whom were taken in by a video showing an American igniting gas emerging from a kitchen tap. This was nothing to do with fracking but was, instead, the result of naturally occurring methane.

The SNP has a disastrous habit of assuming it instinctively knows what is right, but such arrogance may yet be the party’s undoing over fracking.

It has been safely carried out for decades in the United States, where it has driven domestic and commercial energy bills down and provided a secure, domestic source of power for industry.

Now Ineos – whose Grangemouth plant relies on US shale gas shipped over the Atlantic, while the same precious resource is under our feet – is mounting a legal challenge to the SNP prohibition.

What a situation for Scotland, once a byword for engineering excellence and innovation but now fettered to an energy policy based on inefficient, unreliable and expensive renewables.

A major economic and jobs boost, rejected by Nationalists in the name of little more than voodoo myths and guesswork, hangs on the outcome of the Ineos court action.