Jim Ratcliffe

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Jim Ratcliffe is the founding chairman and main shareholder of the petrochemical giant Ineos Group. In 2018 he was ranked as Britain's wealthiest person on the Sunday Times Rich List. His fortune was calculated to have grown by an incredible £15billion on the previous year, rising to £21billion, driven by a huge increase in the value of Ineos. [1]

Previously he had ranked among the UK's 25 richest people, with a net worth of £5.75 billion in 2017.[2]

Ratcliffe was knighted in the 2018 Queen's birthday honours list. [3] Later that same year it emerged Ratcliffe was relocating to Monaco for tax purposes.

Pushing Britain's shale gas revolution

The billionaire has been at the forefront of the push to get fracking going in the UK since 2013-14, spending millions on exploration licences and seconding Patrick Erwin, a senior Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) civil servant, as commercial director at his Ineos Upstream shale startup. [4]

In February 2019 Ratcliffe publicly called on the UK Government to rip up the shale industry’s 'unworkable' regulations or face an 'energy crisis'. Ministers were using 'slippery back door manoeuvres to end shale” including 'absurd' earthquake limits imposed on shale gas developers, Ineos claimed. The company also warned the Government that it's 'betting the future of our manufacturing industry on windmills and imported gas', which could cause 'irreparable damage' to the UK’s manufacturing base. [5]

Political access

Meetings on shale gas with UK government ministers and officials

Affiliations

Resources

Notes