After six months of uncertainty during which the permit for Ineos’ ethane cracker (Project One) was revoked, a new permit for the multi-billion euro project was issued last weekend, reports De Tijd. Work at the port of Antwerp resumed the next working day.

The initial reason for the revocation of the permit had to do with Ineos’ report on the impact of nitrates, which the government and other bodies felt had not been sufficiently researched. In response, Ineos produced a new eight-hundred-page report. The bodies that had previously raised objections, including the Regional Environmental Permitting Committee, the Flemish Agency for Nature and Forests and the Flemish Energy and Climate Agency, have now given conditional or unconditional positive advice for the construction of the cracker.