There is lots of huffing and puffing over the nationalities of the owners of the companies who own onshore gas rights in the UK. The Mail is one of the media outlets reporting the story:
Most of the companies licensed to drill for the fuel using the controversial technique known as fracking are not UK-owned, it can be revealed.
The biggest is IGas, which controls a sixth of the exploration rights issued so far. Last month, its largest shareholder was bought by the Chinese government.
Johnny Foreigner investing in the UK! How ghastly! Barry Gardiner MP, a prominent voice in energy and climate policy, is one of those who seems to be struggling with this idea:
It is never the case that the benefits are going to end up back in the domestic country unless there is a state monopoly. But the concern is that the ultimate beneficiaries will end up being elsewhere.
This is the perennial problem with politicians seeing the only benefit of an economic activity as the bottom line profits. These are, of course, only one rather minor benefit. The big benefits are the lower gas prices enjoyed by consumers, the wages that flow to the employees, the cheques sent suppliers of drilling equipment and to hotels and restaurants and snackbars near the wells and so on. Perhaps even the tax revenues that get sucked up by the state.
It's amazing that one has to explain this to someone charged with representing the public in Westminster.