MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ineos Shale is rolling out a major seismic survey this summer to find prime sites for fracking across swathes of northern England where it holds licences. Ineos has "fired the starting gun" on its fracking programme by pressing ahead with plans to lodge test drilling applications by the end of the year, reported Belfast Telegraph.
The firm said it is also looking to bolster its team by making six appointments - including a geophysicist, an operations geologist and a commercial director - as it takes steps to scale up the business. Ineos will carry out its seismic survey over the summer, before lodging planning applications for core drilling at the end of the year. It expects to press ahead with core drilling - which establishes whether a site is viable for fracking - in 2017, before submitting a separate planning application to carry out test fracks at the beginning of 2018.
As MRC wrote before, Ineos will invest around GBR 640m (USD1 billion) in shale gas exploration in the United Kingdom. The company plans to use the gas as a raw material for its chemicals plants, including Grangemouth in Stirlingshire. Grangemouth is currently running at a loss, but Ineos believes shale gas will transform the economics of the plant.
INEOS Group Limited is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, Switzerland and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, United Kingdom. It is the fourth largest chemicals company in the world measured by revenues (after BASF, Dow Chemical and LyondellBasell) and the largest privately owned company in the United Kingdom.
MRC