A NEW chapter in the history of Scottish coal mining has been marked with the signing of deals worth almost #450m to supply two of Scotland's main electricity producers.
Mining (Scotland) Ltd, the consortium which took over British Coal's Scottish interests in 1994, yesterday signed contracts worth almost #400m with ScottishPower to supply coal from Scotland's last remaining deep mine at Longannet in Fife over the next six years and from the company's nine opencast sites throughout Scotland over the next five.
In a separate deal, Scottish Hydro-Electric has also concluded an agreement worth #50m to take coal from the opencast sites over the next six years.
The agreements should help to secure the future of Mining (Scotland) Ltd, the Longannet mine, and the company's workforce well into the next millennium.
The deals mark a change in fortune for the deep coal mining industry, which employed about 100,000 at its peak in Scotland around the turn of the century.
Systematic colliery closures since have led to fewer than 1000 being employed in deep mining. Mining (Scotland) Ltd now employs about 800 at Longannet and 850 in open-cast mining.
The ScottishPower deal will allow the development of the Kincardine Reserves, one of the most substantial areas of untapped coal supplies in western Europe, lying under the Firth of Forth, near Longannet.
The Royal Bank of Scotland, which has developed an increasingly close relationship with Mining (Scotland) Ltd in recent years, has agreed to provide lending facilities to finance its business plan. It now acts as its sole banker.
NUM (Scotland) general secretary Nicky Wilson hailed the deals as a ''huge boost'' for Scottish mining, and Scottish Industry Minister Brian Wilson said the agreements were excellent news for the coal and power generation industries which would help secure the future of the Longannet mine, the lifespan of which had been forecast at about three years.
The #400m contract involves the supply of 1.7 million tonnes of coal a year to the ScottishPower-run Longannet power station from the deep mine complex. In a separate contract Mining (Scotland) Ltd's opencast operating arm, Scottish Coal, will provide 750,000 tonnes of coal a year.
Mining (Scotland) Ltd estimates the Kincardine Reserves contain about 80 million tonnes of coal. Mr Alan Houghton, managing director of Scottish Coal (Deep Mine), said about 50% of this had been ''written down'' in case geological problems were encountered, but sai
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article