Britain's coal industry digging for success

Britain's coal industry, in sharp decline since the country's infamous miners' strike 20 years ago, could be set for a brighter future, thanks to high oil prices and the country's dwindling gas supplies. "The current climate is better than it has been for decades," said Stuart Oliver, spokesman for UK Coal, Britain's biggest coal producer.
Scottish Coal, the only major coal producer left in Scotland, has meanwhile confirmed beginning talks with the country's landowners about developing coal reserves that could eventually be mined.
The group would establish two opencast mines in Canobie, in Scotland's south, where they hope to exploit what is described as "the biggest untapped reserve of coal in Scotland", according to local press reports.
The project could lead to the creation of 2,000 jobs in Scotland, reports added, although Scottish Coal, which currently employs 1,000 people, said this was wide of the mark and that fewer posts would be created.
"We are just looking at the plans at this stage," a Scottish Coal spokesman told AFP.
"We have not actually done surface drilling or any study to determine if it is going to be economic to mine in the future or not."
Nevertheless, talk of a British coal-mining revival has proved to be a boost for the industry, 20 years after the bitter year-long miners' strike that led to the loss of thousands of jobs. British coal production has dropped by 80 percent from 130.1 million tonnes in 1980 to 28.3 million in 2003, according to official data.
The number of miners in work has plummeted from 180,000 to 9,000 over the same period.
But things could be looking up for the country's coal industry, following a 40 percent hike in the cost of crude oil last year and the fact the country's natural gas supplies are fast running out.
"Coal is by far the cheapest form of electricity generation and the world's most abandoned field," said UK Coal spokesman Oliver, adding that the industry could be boosted further by a decline to Britain's nuclear industry.
Coal prices, though cheaper than other forms of energy, have benefited from sharp rises in crude.
"Coal prices have gone up and the coal mining companies should be making much better profits today than two years ago," said Seymour Pierce analyst Charles Kernot.
UK Coal recently made three requests for opencast mines in England, all of which were refused on the grounds that they might increase nitrogen and sulphur emissions, main causes of acid rain.