He knew it would be a tough job when he took it on last year, but Francis Egan, chief executive of fracking firm Cuadrilla Resources, could not have imagined the role would bring with it death threats and reporters turning up at his house trying to "frack" his garden.
Environmentalists have been campaigning against fracking for years, but Egan's attempt to drill in the pretty West Sussex village of Balcombe has turned hydraulic fracturing (to give it is proper name) into a highly emotive subject that has galvanised opinions across the political and environmental spectrum and threatens to align some of the highest ranking members of the Tory party with a new generation of eco-warriors.
Egan, 52, would like those debates to be about how fracking – pumping high pressure water and chemicals into deep wells to break up shale rock, releasing gas – will help secure the UK's energy future, increase the tax take and bring down gas bills. But an explosion of publicity against Cuadrilla's drilling in Balcombe – fanned by naked protesters, the "frack off" slogan and the arrest of Natalie Hynde – daughter of the Pretenders' Chrissie – has left the nation more concerned than ever about the risk of environmental damage and earthquakes. (Cuadrilla's test fracking was thought to cause a 2.3-magnitude earthquake near Blackpool.)
Last week someone took the fight to the extreme by sending Egan an anonymous death threat, warning he would be sent pipe bombs unless the company stopped its activities. "Fracking kills, and so do we," the email read.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday last weekend, in an apparent attempt to address middle England directly, Egan was at pains to defend the Balcombe drilling. They are not fracking on the site, he said, but drilling a 6in diameter well looking for oil. There are 50 such wells in Sussex alone already, he said.
"If we don't find oil," he wrote, "our work at Balcombe will come to an end." If Cuadrilla does find oil, one option is fracking.
He addressed the "scare stories" about hydraulic fracturing. Drinking water might be polluted? "No, it won't," he wrote. "Not one confirmed case has come to light where fracking has contaminated an aquifer." That gas flaring can cause cancer? "No, it doesn't," he said. What about fracking industrialising the countryside? "No, it won't."
Chancellor George Osborne is a fan of fracking and believes it would be a "real tragedy" if Britain let this potential "energy revolution" slip through its fingers. "It would mean we would have much higher energy costs than other countries, it would mean jobs would go to other countries and we would lose out."
Egan has explained: "Developing our own huge shale gas resources, on the other hand, could generate billions in tax revenue and tens of thousands of jobs."
Conservative backbenchers and more than a few cabinet ministers, however, may be concerned that they could lose their seats if widespread fracking gets the go-ahead. Research by Greenpeace shows 35 Tory MPs in the south have constituencies in areas that could be licensed for fracking.
The public's fracking fears - largely inspired by horror stories from the US where the controversial technique accounts for more than a fifth of domestic gas production - even extend to worries that Cuadrilla might use the wells for toxic waste.
"We've heard everything," Egan said last year. "From suggestions that Blackpool will sink beneath the waves to the idea that we will use the wells for nuclear waste."
Egan, who in a previous job was once stranded in the desert between Tripoli and Benghazi, was recruited by Cuadrilla's chairman and significant financial backer, Lord Browne, last summer.
His first task was to repair the company's public image, which had been more than a little shaken by the Blackpool earthquake, allegations that Cuadrilla staff trespassed into back gardens to survey for gas and a series of bruising public meetings.
Less than a month after taking over, Egan was summoned to meet Charles Hendry, then the energy minister. Hendry told Egan and his team, including his predecessor Mark Miller (who is still with the company) and Lord Browne: "Fracking has now turned into a very controversial issue. The issue of seismic tremors has contributed to this, but the situation has got worse because of recent reports of badly managed community meetings, reports of trespass on people's land.
"These incidents only served to strengthen what was now becoming a national campaign [against fracking],"
Asked how he would improve the public perception of the company, Egan, echoing Tony Blair's famous 1997 election pledge, replied: "Communication, communication, communication."
The residents of Balcombe – who voted 82% against the drilling despite Egan promising them £100,000 for every well fracked if it goes ahead – say he isn't talking enough, and certainly isn't listening to their concerns.
Egan says the company has held several public meetings, and campaigner Louisa Delphy conceded that Egan did sit down and listen to her concerns for an hour at a recent drop-in session.
Ken Cronin, a friend of Egan and chief executive of UK Onshore Operators Group (UKOOG), which represents the shale gas industry, says Egan "tries his hardest to be cheerful" while doing a "very tough job, that I don't think everyone would want to do".
Egan, whose blood runs black and sticky after three decades in the oil industry at Marathon Oil and BHP Billiton, declined to speak to the Guardian for this article. His so-called crisis-PR representatives at Bell Pottinger, the corporate spinners famous for defending Trafigura over its dumping of toxic oil waste in the Ivory Coast, said he didn't have time and "could really do with a holiday".
Campaigners say if they do get the chance to meet Egan, his Bell Pottinger minders – some of whom operate from behind a Cuadrilla, rather than Bell Pottinger email address – are always in attendance.
Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns for Friends of the Earth, says Egan "seems like a perfectly pleasant person to go and have a drink with".
But he adds: "That's probably the image he wants to put across to us … There's always someone from Bell Pottinger with him."
Bennett says the size of the backlash in Balcombe has "absolutely shocked" Egan. "He's a man with a long history in the oil and gas industry. I've met a heck of a lot of people in oil and gas, they are so embedded in it they find it hard to understand why other people would have any problem with oil and gas.
"They talk about mitigating the impact on the environment, and have absolute faith they will be able to do it. He can make all the assurances he likes about mitigating the local impact, but the opposition will continue to grow."
Egan is at pains not to lock horns with Bennett's organisation: "It's hard to say you are opposed to Friends of the Earth," he said in another interview with the Daily Mail. "I mean, even the name makes that hard. Who isn't a friend of the Earth?"
But Bennett says it was clear from the moment he met Egan that he's never going to give up. Neither are the campaigners or the people of Balcombe. "There is going to be a fight," vows Bennett.
The Bell Pottinger gatekeepers say Egan is making every attempt to calm nerves. "Francis has regularly communicated with the local communities in both Lancashire and in Balcombe," they say. "He has written them letters informing them what is happening as well as attending information days held for the local communities. Additionally Cuadrilla has a community line to assist in answering questions from the public. Francis is a good communicator."
Except, apparently, when the tabloids turn up. Last week a Sunday People reporter arrived at Egan's Cheshire home in a digger and hard hat to cheekily ask to frack his garden (which is in an area of high shale concentration). Egan didn't answer the door, leaving Bell Pottinger to fire off an email instead:
"You appear to have pulled up outside Mr Egan's house with a digger," they wrote. "We were wondering what exactly you are proposing to do."
