Feature
Underneath Morecambe Bay ver 40 years of
O
offshore gas has transformed UK gas supply. It's hard to
remember the days when there was no UK offshore industry, when oil was imported and when every town and city had a 'town gasworks' burning coal or coke to make gas which was stored in inflatable gas holders. The discovery of offshore gas has transformed city landscapes as town gas works and gas holders have been demolished and forgotten. The first significant discovery of UK offshore gas was made in 1965 in BP's West Sole field 70 kilometres off the East Yorkshire coast. This marked the beginning of developments of gas fields in the Southern North Sea, which within a decade were supplying almost all of Britain's gas.
Images provided courtesy of Centrica 18
Oil&GasCONNECT
Natural gas has different characteristics to town gas and switching over to using it required all gas appliances to be converted to use the new fuel. All the 13 million customers of British Gas (the monopoly corporation) all over the country were all affected by this. The conversion programme started in May 1967 near Burton on Trent in Derbyshire and was finally completed 10 years later. The cost of converting 40 million appliances (including 2,000 designs of gas cooker) was over ÂŁ550m. Organising the changeover to natural gas involved isolating areas or sectors from the gas distribution network while their equipment was adapted. In advance of the switchover, all the gas users were surveyed to establish what equipment was required to adapt their gas appliances. On the day of changeover everyone had to switch off their appliances and then the town gas was purged from the local mains system. Gas engineers then rushed around fitting the new parts in each house and business. It was only when this was complete that natural gas started feeding into the mains system and conversion was finished for that sector. It took up to a week to convert each sector.
The lesser known gas fields of Morecambe Bay The words 'North Sea' has become almost interchangeable with the UK offshore oil and gas industry, yet to the west of Britain, the land beneath the Irish Sea holds substantial gas reserves. However, exploration of these reserves has been slower and more difficult than exploitation of the North Sea resources. Currently fields in Morecambe Bay produce about 6 per cent of the UK's annual gas requirements, (up to 12 per cent of residential gas demand). The South Morecambe gas field was discovered in September 1974 twenty-five miles off the Lancashire coastal town of Blackpool. It has proved to be one of the UK's largest gas fields. In 1978 the British Gas Corporation started work on developing it. This required establishing new infrastructure, including pipelines (on and offshore), a gas terminal, storage facilities and an onshore base. The ports around Morecambe Bay - which include Fleetwood, Glasson Dock, Heysham and Barrow-in Furness - were all keen to attract the facilities, as were the local cities of Preston, Lancaster. A decision was taken to pipe the gas onshore at to the Cumbrian port of Barrow-in-Furness, at the northern tip of Morecambe Bay, while onshore facilities to service the gas rigs