GRANGEMOUTH: A tanker carrying the first shipment of shale gas from the United States arrived on Tuesday in Britain, where North Sea gas supplies are dwindling and there is fierce public opposition to fracking.

The ship carrying 27,500 cubic metres of ethane arrived at Grangemouth, a sprawling energy complex on the River Forth west of Edinburgh, but was not able to dock due to high winds.

The shipment of Pennsylvania gas arrived in Scottish style, a lone bagpiper playing from the tanker’s prow as it passed under the Forth’s iconic 19th-century railway bridge.

A 2-billion pound ($2.6 billion) investment by Ineos, the world’s third largest chemical company, will create a “virtual pipeline” with eight tankers transporting regular shipments across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain and Norway.

“There simply is insufficient raw material coming out of the North Sea to run Grangemouth,” Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe told a press conference.

The gas shipment will help make up for dwindling offshore supplies which once flowed in abundance from the North Sea but have become increasingly difficult and costly to extract as wells have matured.

North Sea oil production hit a record low last year as the global oil price plummeted.

They have since risen, going up more than 10 per cent in 2015, according to the sector’s annual report.

A new shipment of gas will arrive every three weeks at Grangemouth, where it will be broken down using a chemical process called “cracking” and used to make plastics for bottles, pipes, cabling, insulation, food packaging and pharmaceutical equipment.

Published in Dawn September 28th, 2016