PETROCHEMICAL company Ineos has bought a majority share in a licence for shale-gas exploration and development in Scotland.
The company said it had acquired a 51% of an onshore oil and gas licence for the area around its refining and petrochemical complex at Grangemouth.
The remaining 49% is owned by Australian firm Dart Energy, which is at the centre of a public inquiry over plans to drill for coal-bed methane in the Forth Valley.
The Petroleum Exploration and Development Licence covers 329 square kilometres (204 square miles) of Scotland's Midland Valley, where the British Geological Survey estimates that there are "modest" shale gas and oil reserves.
Grangemouth is being developed to import shale-gas ethane from the US, where vast amounts of unconventional gas has been extracted using the controversial process of fracking.
It is one of only four plants in Europe capable of using shale gas as both a fuel and feedstock for making other products. As well as its Grangemouth base, Ineos also runs a plant in Norway which uses shale gas.
Gary Haywood is chief executive of Ineos Upstream, the company's new oil and gas exploration and production business, which he said has been putting together a team of experts in the sector.
He said onshore exploration is a logical next step for Ineos which the firm is "very excited about".
He added: "Ineos is well-placed to become a major player in the UK onshore gas production sector."
Gas extraction is unlikely to start in the near future, however.
Licences granted by the Department of Energy and Climate Change only allocate the oil and gas resource in an area to a company. Drilling or productionneed planning permission from the local council.
Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, called the buyout "spin".
She added: "Ineos bosses are cynically trying to justify the many millions of public money that they managed to wangle out of the UK Government to keep the high-carbon Grangemouth plant limping on for a few more years."
Dart Energy is involved in a long-running dispute over its plan to drill for coal-bed methane at 22 wells in an area known as Letham Moss, which straddles the boundary of Falkirk and Stirling councils.
Dart insists it will not use fracking - the extraction of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing. However, a public inquiry into the plan between March and April this year attracted 2500 objections from residents and enviromentalists.
Dart Energy and Sepa have until August 26 to respond to the latest written submissions from campaign group Concerned Communities of Falkirk (CCoF).
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article