NORTH SEA GAS

I can recall the newspaper headline announcing that large amounts of natural gas had been discovered in the North Sea. The drilling had come up with substantial supplies of energy. I was in the senior school, so it was after 1963. In fact BP struck gas in September 1965. Sticking out into the North Sea as East Anglia does, this was obviously important news for Norfolk and Suffolk. Exploration vessels were already leaving our ports to service the exploratory rigs, and in 1968 a gas terminal would be constructed at Bacton on the North East coast of Norfolk. It was a news story of national importance – these headlines were not only in the East Anglian Daily Times but also in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. This discovery led to a major alteration in the gas supply; this changed from a processing industry based on gas works using coal to  become an extractive industry, relying on drilling rigs for natural gas.

Gas grid installation works at Southwold harbour mouth, 1969.

Until the late sixties many towns in the country (even the small ones like Southwold and Haleworth) had their own gas works. They produced town gas, which largely consisted of poisonous carbon monoxide. It was made from coal, and besides the gas this gave two useful side products, coke and coal-tar. Coke was used as a smokeless fuel, and tar had many applications, from road mending to the making of soap!

Putting the new gas supply in an underground grid was a huge task; previously the National Grid meant just electricity pylons. The pylons were quite an undertaking, but at least they went overground. Once the gas grid had been completed the little gas works were closed. Many villages that had never had town gas were supplied with natural gas.

Unlike town gas, North Sea gas was not poisonous, which made it safer, although it could still explode if it leaked of course. The combustible part was methane, not carbon monoxide. This didn’t make any difference to the way it worked, but the pressure of the new gas was higher; this led to the need for adjustments to be made to gas cookers and boilers. We had a gas supply at my father’s business premises, but the sole appliance in the building was a single gas ring in the basement. Nevertheless, we had a visit from the gas man who had to adjust the pressure before we could be transferred to natural gas. Everybody’s gas appliances had to be converted to run on the new fuel, and this was in itself a mammoth job.

One effect of going over to a national grid was the spread of gas to even relatively remote places. There were much small villages and towns that had never had gas that supplied with North Sea gas.  They had been beyond the reach of town gas, now they are on the mains. There are still many smaller and even more remote country villages where gas is not supplied; the gas grid might well pass close to these settlements, but the number of consumers is too small to justify the expense of installing the infrastructure. It is a common complaint of country dwellers that they have the added expense of buying bottled gas or oil to fire their central heating. Before I was married I never had central heating, although gas was available in the village. I just had a coal fire in the living room. Exceptionally we lit a fire in the front room as well, but never in the bedrooms although they too had fireplaces; as a result they we were literally freezing in the winter. Ice often formed on the inside of the window panes, which were single glazed. Natural gas was laid on in the 1970s, but it was after I had moved on in 1985 that my sister had central heating installed. The central heating and double glazing have made icy windows a thing of the past.

Gas marker, 2013.

You couldn’t miss the passage of the gas main while it was being installed, with diggers advancing across the countryside.  Even after the trench had been filled in and the grass had regrown over it you could still see where the pipe went from the ‘gas markers’ – posts about 3 metres high with a luminous orange triangle on top. These were placed at strategic points, often where the pipes crossed a road. These were to make it possible to see the route from the air, so that a helicopter could easily inspect the pipeline for leaks and for possibly interference from terrorists as well. These gas markers are still there, although they have become so much part of the country scene that we no longer notice them. That was not the case when they first went up, when they stuck out like bright beacons in the landscape.

After 50 years the gas terminal at Bacton is still a crucial part of our energy requirements, although it was only intended to last 25 years. Britain is not and never has been self-sufficient for natural gas; we rely on supplies from the continent and from North Africa, from where it is shipped in liquid form. This part of the world is not politically the most stable, and this has implications for the reliability of supply.

Another 1969 view of Southwold. The Commer Express you can see peeping out on the left looks ancient, but the Landrover is pretty timeless. 

Another effect of North Sea gas was indirectly the demise of the coal mining industry. The immediate cause of the rapid winding down of the coal industry was the disastrous 1984 strike led by Arthur Scargill. However, this closure of the coal mines would not have been an option if the country had still depended on coal for all its power. With gas no longer being produced from coal, and the substitution of gas electricity generating stations for coal fired ones, we have got on very nicely without the once crucial coal mines. The dirty coal fired power stations are inconceivable today.

At least gas is a much cleaner fossil fuel than coal, but as such the burning of natural gas produces CO_{2 ,} and this is bad for the environment. Apart from nuclear generation as at Sizewell we are increasingly reliant on offshore wind. The power produced by wind farms is clean but unreliable – when the wind drops so does the energy generated. It is also expensive and is only economic because of subsidies. It is becoming less visually intrusive as sea wind farms are almost the only ones now being built. The cost of generation is also coming down. Lowestoft is  growing as the centre for supplying the wind farms in the southern North Sea.

Solar energy is becoming more popular, and many people now have solar panels on their south facing roofs. It does not work after dark of course, and although batteries can store an amount of current this is inadequate for heavy uses like heating. Other forms of renewable energy like tidal have scarcely been tried, although tides does not suffer from intermittent supply like wind power and solar.The prospect of producing gas from shale in this country raises all sorts of questions, pitting the need for reliable energy against damaging the environment and the possibility of producing earthquakes (more likely to be a problem in a densely populated country like the UK). But if shale exists deep below the sand and chalk of East Anglia it is not currently an issue in Suffolk.

JOSEPH MASON

joemasonspage@gmail.com

MEMORIES OF THE COUNTIES OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK