Jim Armitage: Ineos's softly, softly approach may win over fracking doubters

Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos billionaire now ensconced in his new London headquarters, is playing a canny game when it comes to fracking at the other end of the UK.

Faced by opposition in Scotland, where the green lobby has won a moratorium on new fracking, Ratcliffe is being uncharacteristically softly, softly to get the go-ahead for Ineos’s 700 square miles of fracking licences in Scotland.

As well as many cups of tea with local communities, Ineos is offering a clever bribe (my word, not theirs): 6% of revenues from any fracked gas to go direct to the locals.

Expect diamond-encrusted sports halls.

Today it emerged that Ineos, for the first time, is taking a stand at the Scottish National Party conference to push its fracking cause — a move that will doubtless enrage the greenies, but be a step further in Ineos’s subtle PR campaign in Holyrood.

It seems to me that Ineos has a stronger case than most would-be frackers in this hearts and minds game.

Part of the trouble with selling the idea of fracking is that the extraction process creates barely any jobs for the local community.

For locals, the deal looks suspiciously like this: big bad energy company takes cheap gas from our land, pollutes our water supply, employs nobody and makes a massive profit.