Natural gas is mostly used for heating homes or fuelling power plants but it has another key ingredient. You may not have. I've heard of ethene building block of plastics. President trump attention to it a few months ago when he visited the site of a chemical plant. Shell is building in Pennsylvania. This plant like a number of others being built in the US will convert some of the region's ethene into plastic. Trump trump told workers. This was bringing the country. Big Economic Benefits American manufacturing. And we are reclaiming our noble heritage as a nation of builders again but they're so much natural gas and pain that chemical plants in the US can't use use it all turns out this has been a lucky break for the European Chemical Company. Any US in twenty eleven. Its own supplies of pain. From the North Sea were running and low says Warrenville Chomsky an economist with the US Energy Information Administration in yours looked at the United States where ethics supply was growing in where especially in the region that no place to go and the recognize opportunity. Any US commissioned a fleet of ships the first ever to carry ethene by I see to move shale gas from a port near Philadelphia to plants in the UK in Norway. Any US officials did not agree to an interview for this story. But but here's CEO. Jim ratcliffe in a company video. I think for some of these assets in Europe. It's the only way they can survive if we can bring some of the. US Economics Lacrosse to your to the US has quickly become the world's leading exporter of ethene feeding growing plastics industries in India and China and those exports. It's are expected to keep growing back in two thousand sixteen. It was big news when usurping arrived in Scotland site. It is the first delivery for any office of Shale shale gas into the UK. It's arriving at grains mouth lead to this morning and just grain mouth is home to Scotland's biggest petrochemical plant and refinery. You can see some of the flares ears than their operating silent tears across and some of the Mandy cooling towers wretchedly onsite. Kevin Ross is president of the Scottish Plastics and rubber cessation and runs a local plastics testing company. He says American shale gas has allowed any us to restart one of its production units. The plant is now now running at full capacity. That's not just good for the thirteen hundred people who work there but for the suppliers and contractors like him which big at the nearby lab where his company tests plastic materials. He shows me what looks like a glossy plastic pipe. Almost certainly because it's made of it either nuclear nuclear pharmaceutical our military homosexual. Because it's so expensive it's height is a pipe report. Steroids is a very high performance by any US. Got Hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees from the UK to retrofit the GRANGEMOUTH plant for American shale gas. But it's also pushed for its own local supply it wants the UK to allow fracking. The controversial technology that breaks up rock doc deep underground to get oil and natural gas and that plan was met with intense opposition Philip Norman with friends of the Earth. Scotland opposed fracking. Because of what he'd heard about it from communities in the US and Australia people were telling us of gas leaks who tell those like children. The headaches talks that Kellerman over the pushback has resulted in an ironic. Twist to this story in Twenty Fifteen Scotland put in place a moratorium Graham on fracking and the UK government recently did the same. So fracking is illegal in Britain. Even though it's still legal to import shale gas produced by fracking in the US S.. Leasing Claire is a railroad engineer at the Grange Mouth Petrochemical Plant. He has mixed feelings about this. I think it's good idea. The final began gas from somewhere near anything turnpike about it is Scotland said No. We don't Franken here so decided to go to Americans gays gas. He'd rather the UK get a local supply but for now he says America's boom in gas and ethene is helping him keep his job for N._p._R.. News I'm Reid Frazier in Grangemouth