Bans on fracking are ‘madness’ and would deprive downtrodden areas in the North of England of billions of pounds in investment, the boss of a British chemicals giant claims.

Tom Crotty, a director at Ineos, said lucrative licences for shale gas have already begun to create huge investment in the US – and Britain could follow suit.

However, fracking is banned in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and there is growing scepticism of the economic benefits of the process, along with increasing concern about the environmental impact.

Front line: Police at a fracking protest near Pickering, North Yorkshire

Crotty’s comments last night sparked a new row with pressure group Friends of the Earth which complains that a growing body of research is countering claims of widespread benefits.

Guy Shrubsole, a campaigner at the environmental body, said: ‘There’s a lot of hype that the industry has put out there including figures around the number of jobs you could have from shale gas in the future.

‘But we just don’t see there being a significant shale gas industry taking off in the UK that will do anything to dent gas prices for decades.’

Oil firm Shell is about to start building a $10 billion (£7.6 billion) petrochemicals plant in Pennsylvania within weeks.

The US state is home to what is thought to be the biggest gas field outside the Middle East.

Crotty, whose firm owns the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, said there was ‘no question’ that similar investment could follow in Britain if the controversial gas extraction technique is applied.

He said: ‘I think it’s a massive opportunity.

‘Putting a moratorium or a ban on before we’ve even started is madness.’

Crotty added that Ineos might conclude it was not worth going ahead with fracking, but that ‘not even to actually test it is crazy’.

His claims were made amid growing resistance to fracking – the process of pumping water, sand and chemicals into the ground, creating pressure which forces gas out of tightly-packed shale.

Anti-fracking campaigners believe the focus should be on renewable energy, though Ineos and its peers argue that wind and solar are not yet reliable sources.

The UK currently imports about 60 per cent of its gas.

The figure is expected to rise to more than 80 per cent by 2035.

Accountancy firm EY claimed in a 2014 report that fracking could create 64,000 jobs in Britain and attract £33 billion of investment by 2032.