I WAS very disappointed by Dr Keith Baker’s analysis article on fracking (“Costs and risks far outweigh the short-term benefits of this process”, The Herald, January 10). If he was trying to convince the readership that fracking by Ineos is a bad idea then I am afraid he failed as far as I was concerned.

He says initially that the fossil fuel industry needs to be reduced to enable us to meet a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I agree, but unfortunately Ineos is not a fossil fuel supplier. It is a chemical manufacturing company. It uses fracked gas from the United States to make polymers, synthetic oils, and solvents, among many others. Burning their fracked gas would be destroying their raw material. Dr Baker then suggests that fracking may be unsafe in that contamination of the ground water is too risky and it would affect our whisky industry. I wonder from where he thinks our whisky industry gets its water? My impression from the various whisky distillers is that their water comes from Highland springs and burns, definitely not from groundwater.

If the Scottish Government has reached its conclusion to ban fracking by Ineos based on incorrect information such as suggested by Dr Baker then perhaps it needs to look at some facts rather than a conflation of disparate opinions to reach a conclusion.

I wait with interest Ineos’s proposed legal action against the Scottish Government.

Colin Gunn,

259 Kingsacre Road, Glasgow.