A new energy crisis is inevitable unless controversial plans to ignite coal seams off the Fife coast are explored.
Algy Cluff, the oil baron behind the proposals, told a packed audience in Fife on Tuesday that his plans were essential to ensuring that the lights did not go out in Britain, despite strong objections from some residents and environmental campaigners.
Amid some heated exchanges at a public meeting in Methil, Mr Cluff said that utilising a process known as Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) to ignite coal underneath the Forth was safe and essential to ensuring Britain’s energy independence in years to come.
He said: “I believe that coal can be the fuel of the future, but not in the way we used to know it. As an oil man and North Sea pioneer I firmly believe that coal can now bring an energy solution and we can save gas for generations to come.
“Most North Sea oil discoveries are now judged to be marginal. It is clear that the UK is heading from feast to famine.
“Ineos is spending £300 million to build a jetty at Grangemouth to import gas from America, but the Forth has seams just hundreds of yards away from the refinery.”
Mr Cluff, who discovered one of the UK’s biggest oilfields in the 1970s, has been granted a licence to set fire to coal underneath Largo Bay and pipe the gas back to shore.
He claims that burning billions of tonnes of subsea coal will produce enough gas to fuel Britain cheaply and efficiently for hundreds of years.
The Forth at Largo Bay near Leven and at Kincardine has been identified as a possible test site for UCG due to the vast reserves of coal lying under the seabed, too deep to be extracted through conventional mining methods. Instead, a vertical borehole is inserted into the coal seam below the seabed. This is filled with oxygen and ignited with the resulting gas piped ashore to local power stations.
However, some environmental campaigners have raised concerns over potential water pollution, an issue challenged by Mr Cluff at the Fife Renewables Centre.
Although his company admit that the project is years away and still at the feasibility stage, Mr Cluff said all steps would be taken to ensure that any UCG project in the Forth was conducted safely.
This came despite one member of the public claiming that such a project in Largo Bay would happen “over my dead body”.