Ineos is aiming to accelerate its shale gas development in the UK by lodging up to 30 planning applications to drill test wells over the course of the next six months.

The $50 billion petrochemicals firm is controlled by British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, and one of its directors, Tom Crotty, said that the company has plans to begin drilling in the north of England early in 2017, while gas extraction could start in 18 months through the controversial fracking process.

The plan has been announced at a time when the group is ending a six year tax exile with the opening of a new London headquarters for its upstream oil and gas operations which are based primarily in the UK.

Ratcliffe was the UK founder of the company, which he took to Switzerland in 2010 as it was struggling to pay its taxes following the global financial crisis, while he has now also returned to live in the UK.

Ineos’ primary concern now is to continue its free trade with the EU, in particular with Norway, where the firm has a significant petrochemical business, which Ratcliffe says “is a model that works for us.”

The company has been built up over more than a decade through a number of acquisitions and last year moved into gas production after its $750 million acquisition of 12 North Sea fields from Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman.

The group also owns the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland and has ambitions of becoming a major producer of oil and gas, in particular shale gas.

Over the last year, Ineos has backed a very public campaign to persuade the Scottish government to remove its moratorium on fracking.

However, the campaign was unsuccessful and has resulted in the group bidding for licenses in England and now has rights covering 1m acres, primarily in North Yorkshire, the North Midlands and the Cheshire basin.