REVIEW OF BOOKS
Lord Robens on the need for a new policy on energy
Having been involved very intimately since 1947, either from a political administrative point of view or from a primary producer point of view, or as an industrialist, I have read more books on energy and future prospects than I care to remember. Of them all, however, I consider this to be undoubtedly one of the best*.
John Maddox discusses very objectively the possible alternatives to oil, such as nuclear power, solar heat, tidal energy and all the others, which would appear to be somewhat out of science fiction, but he does this objectively and the reader is able to make a splendid assessment for himself, based upon the views and the facts which he presents. Of course if you have been in and around it for nearly thirty years, you are bound to have some points of view which are not quite identical with those of the author of such a book. For example, I do not accept that "we can now see more clearly that the increase in oil prices should have been anticipated." There were many voices raised during the 'sixties under both Conservative and Labour Governments about the power that OPEC would assuredly wield in due course. Indeed, Mr Wilson's Government produced a White Paper, w Inch of course was never debated in Parliament; the opposition from the miners' union had the paper withdrawn before the debate. But this White Paper contained the memorable phrase that "despite the problems of the Middle East Britain's energy policy must be based upon a cheap and plentiful supply of oil for many years to come."‘. The furor at that time from the National Coal Board, the miners' union and miners' MP's *about this ludicrous statement was great enough for the debate on the White Paper never to take place.
It may well have been passed unnoticed by other people, but there can be no question at all that the very formation of OPEC, a very powerful organisation, meant that in due course it would squeeze the West on oil prices and that was said time and time and time again. I remember one Welsh miner in discussing this matter saying -The Arabs won't always live in tents" and if that wasn't also saying that oil would not always be cheap I wonder what it could possibly have meant.
Yes, there were plenty of straws in the wind from many quarters about what happened in 1970. The only people who did not seem to appreciate what was happening were the various Ministers of Energy, of which there were quite a few in the 'sixties. The Welsh miner was of course quite right. Even before oil prices made everybody in the world who was an oil consumer realise how valuable and indeed how expensive it was, there were many very serious considerations paid to the ever-increasing demand for world energy and the recognition that alternative sources would be required. But the cheap and plentiful supplies coming from the Middle East and the pressure of the oil companies to develop their industries, without regard to the deleterious impact that it was having on the European coal industry, satisfied most people. The coal industries of Europe, including the United Kingdom, were allowed to decline and today Europe is paying a heavy price for the loss of the millions of tons of coal which could now have been produced, from mines now closed, at prices cheaper than oil. Whilst the pressure is on now to develop coal supplies, I doubt very much if this is going to be possible in Europe, although there is every possibility elsewhere in the world. The truth is that most European coal has to be got from considerable depths and requires a very large number of underground workers specially trained, particularly the miners at the coal face, and on development work. Miners only come from mining families and as the number of miners has been substantially reduced in these past twenty years, the basis of recruitment has shrunk also. Coal will now be required to give up its energy by underground gasification. There is at least one man in this country, who was scientific adviser at the Ministry of Fuel and Power, as it was then called in 1947 — Dr Roxbee Cox, now Lord Kings Norton — who was very deeply involved in underground gasfication. Experiments were carried out in 1948/49 at an opencast site at Newton Spinney, and with a considerable degree of initial success. A great deal of knowledge was gained and the techniques more thoroughly understood.
It was of course with oil at a dollar or so a barrel, grossly uneconomic, and so the whole experiment was completed, the papers written up and the results put upon a shelf. But they are there to be taken down.
Since that day drilling has made such tremendous progress that the new techniques of being able to drill from a centre point laterally would of course meet the requirement of underground gasification, which demands the joining of two vertical bore holes by a horizontal bore hole underground. The greatest store of energy that is known throughout the world lies in the coal seams and underground gasification is the way in which the energy from these seams could be taken. As I say, it is expensive, but not necessarily more expensive than ten or twelve dollars a barrel for Middle East oil which may or may not go up in the future. My guess is it will go up.
I am sorry, too, that John Maddox did not devote some space to the development of undersea exploration. He certainly refers in some detail to North Sea exploration, which is both deep and difficult: in fact, so far the most difficult oil to be produced anywhere in the world. But a great new technology has been developing in these past few years and the increasing use of submersibles in connection with pipe laying will eventually bring us to the
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