1030 
MINERALS YEARBOOK, 1978-79 
 
North Sea, the NCB announced early in 1979 that it had located extensive
reserves 2 miles offshore in the estuary of the River Dee, in North Wales.
It may be possible to work these reserves through tunnels from the Point
of Ayr colliery nearby. In Scotland, work started on a £37 million
project to mine a total of 50 million tons of recoverable reserves under
Musselburgh Bay, near Edinburgh, by tunnelling 2.5 miles north from the Monktonhall
coal mine. This project, the largest coal project ever undertaken in Scotland,
was scheduled to be operable in 1986 and was expected to provide employment
for 500 persons. 
 A third major project, the Park New mine, was well underway at yearend.
Potentially, its production would rank only behind that of the Selby (10
million tons per year) and Vale of Belvoir (7 million tons per year) projects.
These three projects were major components in the ongoing Plan for Coal,
initiated in 1974, which provided for investments of about £500
million
annually for new coal facilities. The Park New mine, located north of Stafford,
between the villages of Hopton and Salt, was planned to be developed by the
NCB to produce over 2 million tons of coal annually by 1987 or 1988 from
up to 10 workable seams. Interest in the project was high because productivity,
an important consideration in the United Kingdom, was expected to be three
times the national average of 2.2 tons per worker shift. 
 Full output at Selby was expected by 1987 or 1988. A contract for the surface
plant at nearby Wistow was let. It was reported that underground recovery
at Selby would amount to only about 20% of the coal in place there because
of the danger of flooding of the low-lying surface, which is below sea level
at high tide. A first loan from the European Commission, amounting to £65
million, was approved to cover the Selby project's capital expenditures up
to March 
31, 1980. 
 Planning continued on the North East Leicestershire project in the Vale
of Belvoir, which was expected to include three mines, near Hose, Saltby,
and Asfordby, that would yield 7 million tons annually by the mid or late
1980's. 
 The Betwys anthracite mine near Ammanford, north of Swansea in Wales, was
opened on schedule in mid-1979, with a capacity of 500,000 tons of anthracite
produced per year. The Welsh anthracite field, which stretches northwest
from Glyn-Neath for 25 miles, is the only source of anthracite 
in the United Kingdom. Its production had declined in the previous 5 years
from about 3 million tons per year to 2 million tons per year because of
declining productivity and increasing costs. The Betwys colliery was expected
to slow or reverse this trend because it was projected that productivity
there would be 5 tons per worker shift, compared with the national average
of 2.2 tons per worker shift and the South Wales coalfield average of 1.3
tons per worker shift. Of the coal mined in the Welsh anthracite field, half
was mined from the surface, and half was mined underground. 
 Natural Gas.—Gas Gathering Pipelines (North Sea) Ltd., the company
formed in 1977 to study the viability of gas-gathering pipeline systems in
the Northern Basin of the North Sea, submitted its final report in March
1978. It concluded that information available at that time indicated no immediate
need for a new gas trunk pipeline to shore and that gas should accordingly
be accommodated in the existing trunk lines from the Brent and Frigg fields.
However, the report admitted uncertainty with regard to these conclusions
and recommended a continued review. 
 The Morecambe gasfield in the Irish Sea, northwest of Liverpool, was planned
to be developed by the British Gas Corp. (BGC) by the mid-1980's. The field
was discovered in 1974 by the BGC, the State gas monopoly, and after further
successful drilling in 1978, was estimated to contain 2 trillion to 3 trillion
cubic feet of gas. 
 An estimated 25% of the supplies purchased by the BGC was associated gas
from the country's northern oilfields. According to the BGC, average prices
to consumers were expected to rise above those for more easily accessible
southern gas; the welihead price for northern gas paid by the BGC was 10
pence per therm (about 100 cubic feet), compared with 1.9 pence per therm
for southern gas. It was claimed that future development of more marginal
fields, such as South Indefatigable and Sole Pit, would require prices near
the 10-pence level. 
 At the end of 1979, the BGC announced price increases of 20% for domestic
consumers and 10% for industrial and commercial users, to be phased in beginning
April 1 and October 1. This attempt to bring gas prices more in line with
the cost of other fuels was a controversial move, since the BGC's pretax
profits in the 1979 fiscal year were £361 million on £3.0
billion
in sales, and since profits could in a few years exceed