The chemicals giant Ineos booked a stand at the SNP bash in Aberdeen this week for just £4,000. It will cost the company a lot more to win over the hearts and minds of those opposed to its plans to extract shale gas by fracking in Scotland.
Not so long ago, it was easy to caricature Ineos and its chairman Jim Ratcliffe as a cipher for the sins of capitalism. Two years ago the company’s stand-off with its Grangemouth workforce and the Unite union culminated in a weekend of job threats and industrial brinkmanship.
The Ratcliffe approach to industrial diplomacy might have given gunboats a bad name.
The chairman lives in Switzerland: where else might a tax-minimising, union-breaking, carbon-burning chief executive abide? It was unsettling to see when he finally spoke in public that he wasn’t stroking a white cat.
Times have changed. Scottish politics has changed. The SNP has been in government so long that it finds itself in a position of influence over a fracking question it previously could have merrily opposed, just for the hell of it.
This year we witnessed the strange dichotomy of SNP supporters wearing “Frack Off!” badges – apparently sanctioned by their party – while it emerged that some senior figures may look favourably at the prospect of a new onshore gas industry near the banks of the River Forth, from either the coal bed or shale deposits.
The economic case is there and Ineos is pressing it hard, publicly and privately. Shale gas could make an enormous positive difference to Scotland, it says. It promises jobs, energy security and, above all, it is safe, it repeats.
Opponents of fracking – environmentalists, green activists, parents who live in the areas that might be fracked – know all the stories about the health risks presented by “unconventional” gas extraction.
Such concerns were amplified by the independent US film Gasland, praised for its emotional content. A powerful film, it is to some extent sensationalised and Ineos claims it is thoroughly discredited. But it has been broadcast and watched by hundreds of thousands on YouTube.
Regardless of your view of Gasland, anti-frackers point to the concerns of public heath officials and others in the United States. There, two states – New York and Vermont – have banned fracking. Others are more gung-ho: oil industry-friendly Texas and Oklahoma have been trying to ban the very concept of fracking bans.
There is one political dichotomy for the SNP and the broader “Yes” movement, thirled as many are to the offshore oil and gas industry and excited by new finds west of Shetland, or the possibility of a future oil bonanza in a Trident-free Firth of Clyde. “Unconventional” it may be, but fracking is not entirely dissimilar to the methods used to force oil from the seabed. Carbon extraction is a messy, mucky business, regardless of the method.
In public relations’ terms, Ineos is transformed. Gone is the dour trench warfare of that 2013 episode, when the company demanded UK and Scottish government support as well as the acquiescence of its Grangemouth workforce if it was to invest anew in a plant it bought from BP.
The company’s promise to secure Grangemouth’s future appears genuine. It has completed Europe’s biggest gas tank onsite and the construction of eight state-of-the-art tankers in China is well underway.
Mr Ratcliffe even does an “Ask Jim” section in a slick online TV broadcast on the company’s glossy new website, which trumpets community briefings and pro-fracking materials. The SNP conference presence is just part of a well-resourced and highly professional campaign. Ineos wants you and me to accept that fracking is the future.
Mr Ratcliffe realises he must convince people that fracking is good for Scotland. Rather than those tankers importing American shale gas, he says, imagine sourcing the gas at home, and exporting it to mainland Europe.
People in the chemicals industry tell me Ineos is a genuine innovator. In the tradition of corporate upstarts, it is disrupting the global gas market. It is well funded and imaginative. Even Mr Ratcliffe looks like a rebel, all messy hair and missing tie as he chats online about investments here and market opportunities there. He is not going away anytime soon.
He has claimed publicly that the SNP favours fracking and that it awaits its chance to say so, implying that this might happen after next May’s Holyrood elections. For many of its supporters, and particularly “Yessers” who have boosted the party ranks since last year’s referendum, will that be a step too far?
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