Tuesday
Mar102015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill iGas hooks up with Ineos
Mar 10, 2015 Energy: gas Some interesting developments on the UK shale front this morning, with Ineos buying a share in iGas's UK shale assets. The deal will bring a great deal of capital oomph to iGas and gives Ineos a stake in the Bowland shale.
Not a lot of use if they can't drill anything though.
Reader Comments (17)
Vertical integration makes sense. Ineos helps secure a source of its feedstock.
The fact that Ineos is buying into Bowland will itself put pressure on to permit exploration.
If enough companies behave as if shale gas exploration were the most normal thing on earth then it will happen. The argument about what methods they are allowed to employ will become so marginal it will start to look quaint. Give it a couple of years.
Will we witness a Willie Walsh - BA - volcanic ash moment? In light of the election it seems unlikely.... which is sad to what's left of my mind.
There is an awareness that a successful Ineos will benefit Britain, Scotland even, and that it needs a feed stock, so linking that with our own fraccing should help things along.
I don't immediately associate Switzerland with a thriving petrochemical industry. Presumably Ineos must have made money from shrewd investments elsewhere.
If so, this would suggest some confidence in UK produced shale gas, not necessarily in the short term though. Swiss investors have a reputation for spotting longer term trends and opportunities, beyond minor and major conflicts outside their boundaries and obvious control.
Eventually this european madness will HAVE to stop. Ineos will be ready to demand ridiculous sums of money for their oil assets.
I saw a BBC reporter in devon, england yesterday. She was stood in a beautiful road with rolling hills behind and 6 masive, ugly turbines blotting it out.
Stephen Richards: That was six of the 22 wind turbines at the Fullabrook Down wind farm in north Devon. It was the biggest wind farm in England when it was built. It's a travesty and is now owned by an Irish company, ESB International, which is owned by ESB, Ireland's State-owned electricity company, It has ruined a large stretch of the coastal landscape and is still causing huge noise problems for the local residents. The item on the news was about locals claiming it is causing more thunderstorms and the lightning strikes are disrupting the electricity supply, phone lines and internet access.
Phillip Bratby on Mar 10, 2015 at 12:40 PM
Ireland's State-owned electricity company helping Irish tourism.
Golf Charlie on Mar 10, 2015 at 12:18 PM
While BP, ICI and even BASF were selling off their unwanted operations, Jim Ratcliffe was buying them up.
In fact:
"Ineos’s heritage is in a number of well known blue chip chemical companies. These include Amoco, BASF, Bayer, Borealis, BP, Degussa, Dow Chemical Company, Enichem, Erdölchemie, Hoechst, ICI, Innovene, Lanxess, Monsanto, Norsk Hydro and Solvay. The company was formed in 1998 to affect a management buyout of the former BP petrochemicals assets in Antwerp, Belgium. Since then, it has expanded by purchasing several other businesses. Several of its divisions formerly belonged to BP, and others have been divested by large companies such as Amoco, BASF, ICI, Dow Chemical, Solvay and UCB, as they have looked to focus more closely on their main product lines. In October 2005 Ineos agreed to purchase Innovene, BP’s olefins and derivatives and refining subsidiary, which had an estimated 2005 turnover of US$25 billion, for $9 billion. The deal, which was completed on 14 December 2005, roughly quadrupled Ineos's turnover, which was previously around $8 billion."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineos
Golf Charlie
Ineos' interest is because they own the major chemical works at Grangemouth. They have bought up rights to drill for shale gas in West Lothian and have been negotiating contracts for importing US-produced ethanol. They are a pretty hard-nosed bunch as the unions discovered last year.
The interest in iGas follows fairly rapidly from the inane announcement from the Scottish government of a moratorium on fracking in the face of an independent report almost urging them to go ahead. Further evidence, if any were still needed, that the SNP are not prepared to take the hard (political) decisions at least before next year's Scottish elections and are certainly not going to tell the eco-loonies to eff off in case that sparks a Green surge (or a Labour surge since Murphy has already said that a Scottish Labour government would ban fracking).
It's a tragedy since in a sane world and with an informed electorate (don't laugh!) the SNP/Green/Labour attitude would guarantee they would lose votes by the barrowload. Shows how gullible people are and the extent to which the eco-nuts can get away with such blatant lies!
Jim Ratcliffe is a smart operator. Give it time....
Robert Christopher, thank you, interesting!
Onassis made a fortune when ships were so cheap they were being 'given away'.
Green Blob is trying to devalue assets of fossil fuel companies, by 'undermining market confidence', or encouraging divestment, depending on how polite you want to be.
Some of Ineos' previous acquistions were made on the assumption of an upward trend in crude oil prices, which in the much longer term, is probably right. Acquistion of shale gas interests now, with current prices reflecting market forces, as opposed to market fixing, is encouraging, and further exposes Green Blob propaganda, for what it is.
Green Blob relies on fixing maths and markets, and recent top marks, are now getting exposed, as bad Marx.
Mike Jackson, point taken about Grangemouth/Ineos!
With the possible wipe out of Labour in the election in Scotland to SNP, and a resurgent move for devolution, the SNP are going to have to get some new calculators to do their maths, or turn Scotland into Europes first Green basketcase economy, without immediate financial support from the EU.
If SNP/the People of Scotland, reject Green calculators, relying on renewables, I would predict a bonny Scotland. Maybe the Swiss are onto something.
I remember 25? years ago being given a solar powered calculator. Having no batteries, it was very thin, and fitted nicely in a jacket pocket or file. It worked outside on a cloudy day, but inside, required a powerful desk light!
Golf Charlie
I 'ad one of them!
Miracle of modern science — for about a year. Or less.
I'm happily anticipating a Labour campaigner knocking on my door so I can perforate their liner with a few home truths about that disastrous anti-worker policy!
kellydown, and others
Should someone knock on your door, electioneering, with a whiff of 'green' to them, do ask whether any of their journeys on that day involved an internal combustion engine, or electricity derived from burning something.
Dale Vince was on Radio 2 today, telling everyone that his new charging points at motorway service stations were all powered by renewables. No one called him out on the impossibility of his claim.
The Advertising Standards Authority, probably believe all their power needs come from renewables too.
The almost imperceptible establishment movement towards allowing / trying out enhanced methane recovery from shale needs an almighty shove once the C of G is right. I'd judge that it's there - but that some testicles are AWOL. Ineos are simply positioning themselves.
@GC - Isn't HRH Chris "Wrong Type of Rain" Smiff (late of Environment Agency) still chairperson of the ASA? He'd allow Dale Vince to promote pixies on treadmills and mermaids on exercise bikes as the sources of electricity.