By Anders Lorenzen

Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest man and the founder and CEO of Ineos, the petrochemical giant, who perversely pays little UK tax as he resides in the tax haven of Monaco, has won UK government backing from a giant fossil fuel project which campaigners have labelled as climate wrecking.

A massive petrochemical plant is to be constructed in the Belgian city of Antwerp by Ineos, the biggest of its kind for 30 years in Europe and which will create plastic production on a scale never before seen in the European continent, at a time when countries are setting targets to reduce plastic consumption is being aided by the UK government as they are to provide a £600m guarantee.

UK government backing

Project One is receiving financial support from the export finance department, an arm of the Department for Business and Trade. This is despite the fact that the government has admitted the project will have an adverse impact on the climate, biodiversity, the environment and risks to social and human health.

The project will import fracked shale gas from the US, a technology that Ratcliffe himself has lobbied hard for and failed to bring to the UK. The imported gas will be used to provide ethane for the cracker plant and will produce 1450 kilotons of ethylene, the building block of plastic, a year. 

The announcement of the UK government’s support for the project came as a series of environmental NGOs were preparing legal challenges to stop the project spearheaded by the environmental law firm Client Earth.

While Ineos officially have declared the project will be carbon neutral within ten years there’s no pathway for this and currently, there’s no technological way to produce plastic zero-carbon without the use of offsets. In addition, Ratcliffe has a strong record of using his wealth influence and lobbying power by pushing back on green policies.

The NGO Break Free from Plastic has found that over 99% of the plastic comes from fossil fuels and plastic production is by far the largest industrial oil, gas and electricity user in the European Union (EU), Fossil fuels cannot be replaced as a feedstock in the petrochemical industry.

In recent years, Ineos and Ratcliffe have been heavily involved in sportswashing by funding global sporting events as well as buying up top sports teams with the latest example being Ratfliffe’s 25% acquisition of the Premier League football team Manchester United.