Oil drilling in East Yorkshire

[Bryan]

Following on from the Boulby Potash we now have Oil drilling being allowed in East Yorkshire.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-16535886

[52D]

Not the first land oil field in the LNER area if the black stuff is found. Sherwood Forest, Newark and area around were developed during world war 2 and the stuff is still being pumped out with minimal enviromental impact.
There was also the Scottish shale oil industry, although slightly different processing was used the end result was the same.

[richard]

It is just an exploration well. Most exploration wells don't get reported and are little more than boreholes (which very rarely get reported!). Yorkshire does have oil - and has produced oil from before WW2. I'd have to dig out my history books, but iirc the fields near Pickering were one of the few pre-war clues as to what lay under the North Sea (there are also similar fields under the Netherlands).


Richard

[neilgow]

Nothing new here, a Company exploratory drilled for oil/gas on my great cousin's farm near Gillamoor in the 1960's. His family had visions of great wealth but mother was more practicable, lumping them all with the Clampetts, a USA 60's comedy show. I never did hear of the final outcome.

However, I do believe the East Riding is sat on large reserves of coal, now that will upset some folk as they always thought they were superior to the mining classes from the West Riding. Eee bah gum. Just think, they might have to open up the Malton to Driffield line, Class 70's through Burdale, a 500 acre opencast mine near Garton, what more could you ask for.

Rgds

NG.

[richard]

The East Yorkshire coal is very deep - no opencast mines.
Think about the Yorkshire-Nottinghamshire fields - the deeper mines (eg. Selby) were in the east. An East Yorkshire mine would be deeper still.

The coal gets even deeper under the Southern North Sea. Buried deep enough that there has been enough heat to produce sizable quantities of methane. And that is how the Southern North Sea gas fields were formed.

If East Yorkshire / Lincolnshire coal is ever exploited, it would probably through some kind of insitu gasification mechanism (broadly speaking, drill deep hole, pump heating fluids down, collect the methane that is produced). There are a lot of issues with that including CO2 emissions, but I can't see it happening in any great rush, what with the current fracking phobia and the relative glut of natural gas.