Jim Ratcliffe’s Energy Empire Ends All Investment in Britain Over Labour Tax Raids
Jim Ratcliffe’s energy empire, Ineos – one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers – is ending all investment in Britain and diverting it to the US over Labour’s tax raid on oil and gas producers. The Mail has more.
Ineos, the energy empire owned by Manchester United Football Club investor Jim Ratcliffe, plans to plough £3 billion into America after turning its back on the UK.
It says the move is due to high costs including the windfall tax, a levy on oil companies making massive profits thanks to the global high price of energy.
Brian Gilvary, Chief Executive of Ineos’s energy division, said yesterday: “We have stopped investing in Britain. Our future investment will not be [in] the UK. There’s no question of that.”
And Mr Gilvary said the company “cannot invest with any certainty because we can’t be sure what future tax rates will be”.
He added: “The problem is that the UK has become one of the most unstable fiscal regimes in the world from a perspective of natural resources and energy.”
Ineos shut down the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland this year after a century, leading to the loss of more than 400 jobs. The firm also operates the Breagh gas field and Clipper South rig in the North Sea, off the coast of Teesside.
And its olefins and polymers plant, also at Grangemouth, is at risk of closure due to high carbon taxes foisted on manufacturers.
It is also behind the Forties Pipeline System, which carries 30% of the UK’s oil to shore.
Mr Gilvary said “the future lies” in other countries, especially the US.
He told the Telegraph: “The United States has got a long track record. In the 1990s, it was producing 6.5 million barrels of oil a day and importing five million.
“But now it’s producing 30 million barrels a day and exporting. That’s proper energy security and a proper fiscal regime.
“The US absolutely understands the importance of domestic supplies and how you can drive economic growth off the back of it, so that’s the place where we’ll be.”
In April, Sir Jim – whose wealth is estimated at £17 billion – warned that Labour is “squeezing the life out of our abundant energy reserves in the North Sea”.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
It’s bad enough when individual wealthy people leave, but the insane socialists say, well we don’t need their sort in our glorious republic, forgetting about the tax take and money they spend. The job losses are almost invisible as a result and easy to wave off. But when big businesses walk, businesses like Ineos with 10,000 direct employees and who knows how many secondary jobs, it is devastating. Hopefully, we’ll get through this and when we recover, people will talk about Miliband and the others in the same way they talk about Thatcher. The big difference, she caused less coal mining jobs to be lost than Wilson/Callaghan and the other jobs that went were loss making drains on the economy. Johnson, Sharma, Starmer, Miliband and every other net zero zealot have destroyed profitable businesses and good jobs. Traitors everyone.
You do not spend £3bn on plant investment and then just up sticks and move again. Jobs will be lost for decades. But who would expect a Far Left Student Union government without anyone who has run a business and hardly anyone who has even worked in the private sector to understand how an economy works.
Thatcher caused the mines to be lost? I thought that was the unions, demanding ever higher salaries in the face of extreme competition from abroad. And if you go even further back, it was the League of Nations, forcing Germans to flood the UK with free coal, forcing already weakened British mine owners and operators to fail completely. And then the policies of cretins like Emmanuel Shinwell, who just really hated successful families and enterprises like the one which existed at Wentworth Woodhouse. Pull the other one, Cotford. The unions were destroying the country with their ignorant, unrealistic demands, being used to being treated like superheroes as they were, and expecting the whole country to subsidise the way of life they had got used to. Thatcher saved a terrible situation from getting a whole lot worse. And the coal is still there, it hasn’t gone away. Soon it will make sense – even to the likes of Mad Ed – that we can go and dig for it again. Thatcher wanted to smash the Unions, and boy did she. She didn’t want to smash the miners. I accept that many people’s lives were made very difficult by the collapse of… Read more »
Have an up-vote.
When it’s worth it we can dig for it – probably using a lot more automation these days.
Robots will very soon be able to do the work of the miners. 24/7
When new technology can be brought in, the work force needs to be reduced. But the unions were against that, before nationalisation, and afterwards.
When the coal seam thins there comes a time when the mine becomes uneconomic. The unions didn’t understand that.
When coal can be imported, at 75% of the home price, the market will win. The unions didn’t understand that either.
And there is opencast mining – or is that cheating?
Why. They won’t let us burn it so why mine it.
If only robots could drive trains…
I realise I may have been unfair to CotfordTags, s/he did not actually state Thatcher SHOULD be talked about in the same way that I hope Mad Ed et al will be talked about!
I’ll admit that when I see someone writing about Thatcher I immediately assume they hate her. Forgive me, it’s a process….
Sorry, read it after my reply. Have an uptick 🙂
MAk.
In the 1980s, we lived in South Yorkshire. In ’84, following ‘King Arthur’s’ arrest at Orgreave, I was at a 50th birthday party for a very good pal who was an Inspector in the S. Yorkshire police and who I’d known for years. A couple of his police chums were in attendance and one was C. Inspector John Nesbitt (since disgraced over the Hillsborough farrago) who, as it turned out was the arresting officer of Scargill a few weeks earlier. I shook John’s hand with gusto, vowing not to wash it until absolutely necessary. He informed me that on the fateful day, the charging sergeant dealing with the admin in the arrest asked of the detainee: “name? A: Scargill.. Sgt: first name? A: Arthur. Sgt: Occupation? A: Union representative. Sgt: which effin’ Union?”—Gone was the bluster and self-assuredness tv coverage had always portrayed.
A year later the Sunday Times Insight published their forensic ‘Strike. Thatcher, Scargill and the Miners.’ A must read for perspective on the entire history of events and dramatis personae.
You misunderstood my sentiment, MAK, I was and still am, a radical Thatcherite and while I recognise not everything was done right, the battle with Scargill was one of her greatest achievements. Coal only survived because the NCB was subsidised to dig it out of the ground, subsidised when it was burnt by British Rail, before the end of steam and then subsidised when it was burnt by the CEGB. Three lots of subsidy just to keep thousands of miners working. My point, if poorly made, is how history (but definitely not me), looks back at her and my hope that those who denigrate her will look at the era since the uniparty have forced net zero on us, with the same hatred.
We’re sorted, Cotford 🤝
Cheers
Not sure why people refer back to Thatcher when discussing the economy 30 years after she was ejected. Her support for freedom was timely and the need to understand that is becoming critical.
During that period, Labour closed more than the Conservatives.
The problem is that if you close 60 out of 100, that 60% closed. Then, if I close the remaining 40, that’s 100% closed, which is a bigger percentage.
Terrific post M A k.👍👍👍
Yes you are right. More coal mines were closed before Thatcher than after. The coal mines were de facto bankrupt costing more to work than the value of the coal they produced – paid for by the taxpayer. The same was true of the other State-run industries.
State-run industries are cut off from private capital investment, and rely on money from the Treasury which cannot provide the required funding needed for every industry plus the other Government funded activities like armed forces, schools, welfare-state.
These industries become bloated, inefficient, under-invested and uncompetitive on the global market.
Huge amounts of wealth were consumed by the “all you can eat” free welfare buffet, instead of being left in private hands to stimulate economic activity by technological advance and innovations.
Net Zero is State direction of the economy using subsidy, taxes and regulations to promote political aims, whilst strangling businesses which increase economic activity and wealth creation.
Yes – traitors and evil.
It’s been inevitable, ever since I heard a BBC R4 weather forecast, followed by a Climate Information Announcement, which was really a warning, though I took it as a warning: no it was a threat.
And that was around September 2001.
And who is going to want to go to university and read Chemical Engineering? Well, I mean, do that, and stay in the UK.
Do not ever make the mistake that left wingers are a) Capable of logical reasoning b) That they care for anyone but themselves and their ideology.
The way to deal with them is as Pink Floyd’s roadie said on Dark Side of the Moon. ” A short, sharp shock”!
i.e. Tell them, NO, f off!
Labour are only continuing what the fake Tory Party were doing to our energy base. Not a fag paper to put between them in their treachery.
The sad thing is that the net zero bunch will see this as some kind of victory.
It is. For them.
It’s the beginning of the end.
400+ skilled jobs lost because of a handful of well rumnerated idiots who should be in secure mental homes, except we closed them down as well.
I feel so sad for our young folk.
There will be a great future for them in TFL, if they get their way and run it solely for the benefit of the workers. The shorter the hours the more staff they need. Plenty of nice easy jobs for all the redundant energy workers, with perks aplenty.
Great ….so good to see how the what 20/50 th government reset is going…..Mad Ed is such a winner.
There is not a better example of just how bad 2 TK’s government is, when it drives out of the country, one of the truly great examples of a self made man.
It’s also a good example of a Chemical Engineer creating jobs, wealth, products for industry, and even trying his hand at managing a football club, and a PPE graduate destroying all in his path, including a banana.
Labour is squeezing the life out of the Country, it even backs killing at both ends of the human life spectrum
Liebour is doing what it has been instructed to do and that is to destroy the country. I would be surprised if Kneel is not on some sort of Brucie Bonus as a result of Jim Radcliffe’s decision.
After years of Man United being run poorly they now seem to be in good hands. When people like this tell you our Government (s) are destroying our Industrial Base, we need to listen.