A charm offensive has been launched to convince Scots of the benefits of shale gas “fracking”, with chemicals group Ineos promising to pump hundreds of millions of pounds into communities where the controversial technology is used.

The campaign underscores the company’s determination to tap unconventional gas to secure the future of its Grangemouth refinery complex despite a fracking moratorium announced by the Scottish government in January.

Ineos would be seeking to “get the public onside” by persuading communities that fracking was safe, first in areas where the company already has fracking licences and then more widely across central Scotland, said Tom Crotty, the Swiss group’s communications director.

“That will be involving us in drinking a lot of tea in a lot of village halls,” Mr Crotty said.

The Scottish moratorium and a simultaneous tightening of controls south of the border were a response to public doubts about the safety and environmental impact of fracking, in which high pressure fluids are used to fracture rock and extract gas.

Ineos has said the sprawling Grangemouth plant, Scotland’s most important industrial complex, may not survive in the long term without access to local shale gas. A scheme to replace dwindling supplies of North Sea gas with imported US shale gas has secured Grangemouth for the next “15 plus” years, Mr Crotty said.

“Beyond that period is an unknown,” he said. “The only way to be sure of the future . . . is for Scotland to have its own gas.”

Ineos’s Scottish fracking plans have prompted a range of often fierce objections, including opposition from climate campaigners opposed to the tapping of new fossil fuel resources, environmental activists worried about the impact on water quality and local groups concerned about the industrialisation of rural areas.

“Fracking is a dangerous, dirty industry and all the money in the world can’t hide that,” said Mary Church, of environmental group Friends of the Earth Scotland. “No amount of slick roadshows are going to allay the concerns of communities,” she said.

Ms Church also dismissed as “pie in the sky” Ineos’s promise of large payments for communities where fracking goes ahead.

The company announced last year that it would pay 4 per cent of shale gas revenues to landowners and homeowners and 2 per cent to community projects.

A typical “shale gas community” spread over 100 square kilometres would be host to about 200 wells, generating a total of £375m in payments over their life including a potential £125m towards projects such as new schools, parks or community centres, Ineos said.

The Scottish moratorium had not had any impact on Ineos’s preparations to extract shale gas as it was still engaged in preparatory work and was confident any review would support the use of fracking, Mr Crotty said.

“We have a very steady process that we need to go through over the next year to make sure what we are doing is safe and that it gets approvals,” he said. “We don’t see anything that would stop us doing that.”

Gary Haywood, chief executive of Ineos Upstream, said there was no difference in its approach to fracking in Scotland and in England, where the company this month announced plans to spend £138m during the next few years on shale gas drilling.