UK Government support for fracking is a "smokescreen" to hide its failure to lower the cost of energy, an SNP minister has said.
Michael Matheson told the Record the controversial method of extracting shale gas would not be approved for use in Scotland. The Cabinet Secretary for Energy insisted the technique would make "no difference" on household fuel bills.
Liz Truss pledged to end a moratorium on fracking in England shortly after she became Prime Minister last month. But the embattled Tory leader has so failed to explain exactly how the policy would work and is already facing pressure from her own MPs to ditch it.
"Fracking is not part of our future energy mix," Matheson said in an interview at his office in the Scottish Parliament.
"It would have absolutely no impact on meeting our overall energy needs and in reducing the price of gas. The wholesale price of gas is set on the international market and will make no difference to that whatsoever.
"The quantities are of such a small amount that it will make no meaningful impact to meeting our needs. If there is anything we need to do to reduce the cost of energy is to decarbonise our energy system and reduce our need to use oil and gas because of the way those prices are set.
"If we can get away from using fossil fuels we will be much more reliant on electricity - which is a market that we can control domestically."
Matheson insisted there would be no way for the UK Government to encourage fracking without Holyrood approval.
He added: "It's a planning matter and something that would come to Scottish ministers for licensing - and I have no plan to issue any licenses on fracking. We don't need it and we can see the pathway is renewables."
Asked why he thought Truss was supportive of fracking, the SNP MSP added: "It's a smokescreen. What they announced was to give the impression they were doing something to help reduce energy costs and deliver energy security."
Matheson was speaking before a Tory MP suggested fracking could be explored somewhere like the "northern reaches of Scotland" to get around community opposition in built-up areas.
Laura Farris, an MP in Berkshire, told the BBC it was "not something that’s going to be happening" in her constituency. In her speech to SNP conference on Monday in Aberdeen, Nicola Sturgeon reiterated that the Scottish Government will "not be issuing licences for fracking".
Truss previously told MPs that tapping into the "huge reserves" of shale gas could help the UK meet a new target of being a net energy exporter by 2040.
She has previously argued the UK is too dependent on international energy prices, which have rocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
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