One of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers is diverting all investment in Britain to the US in a protest over Labour’s tax raid on oil and gas producers.
Ineos, the energy empire owned by Manchester United Football Club investor Jim Ratcliffe, plans to plough £3billion 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 per cent 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 6.5million barrels of oil a day and importing 5million.
‘But now it’s producing 30million 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 £17billion – warned that Labour is ‘squeezing the life out of our abundant energy reserves in the North Sea’.
He said the threat of energy blackouts would become ‘more frequent and more serious as domestic gas production falls and critical infrastructure is decommissioned’.
This came after Britain became ‘perilously close’ to blackouts during a ‘cold snap’ in January, when there was little wind.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband hiked taxes on North Sea producers’ earnings from 75 per cent to 78 – making the duty among the highest in the world.
Windfall taxes were introduced in response to soaring energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and will now be extended until the end of the decade.
Mr Miliband’s Net Zero ambitions have recently been blamed for a shock rise in energy bills that will see millions of people paying more this winter.
Regulator Ofgem said ‘policy costs’ imposed by the energy secretary have contributed to the price cap rising at double the rate forecast by industry analysts.
Households will pay more to switch off wind turbines when they are generating too much power – as well as funding gas plants to step in when the wind is not blowing.
The Conservatives’ energy spokesperson Claire Coutinho said: ‘Sir Jim Ratcliffe is right – sky-high energy prices and crippling carbon taxes are causing the death of British industry.
‘Ed Miliband needs to put growth and jobs ahead of his obsession with Net Zero, scrap the ban on new oil and gas licences and back the North Sea. Cheap energy must come first.’
In 2023, Sir Jim – who has an estimated net worth of £17billion – accused the Government and the Competition and Markets Authority of being ‘increasingly hostile to business’.
The tycoon highlighted the watchdog’s decision to block a £790million takeover of a concrete additives firm by Ineos, as well as the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas firms and lack of support for manufacturing.
