Britain: An official handbook > 1977

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
TABLE 19: Coal Statistics 1965-76
255
Research
Unit 1965-69 1973-746 1974-75 1975-76
(average)
Output
of which, opencast
Consumption
of which, export
Average labour
force0
Output per man¬
shift0:
at coal face
overall
Collieries in opera¬
tion0
million
tons
’000
tons
number
1760
7-0
1771
3-3
418-9
5-7
1-9
430
107-1
8-9
121-5
2-1
252-0
7-2
2-1
259
125-2
9-1
127-3
2-1
246-0
7-8
2-3
246
123-8
10-2
121-7
1-4
247-1
7-8
2-2
241
Source: National Coal Board
0 NCB mines only.
6 Affected by an industrial dispute.
ing ten years, involving maintenance of deep-mined capacity at the annual
level of around 120 million, tons and an increase in opencast production
to 15 million tons a year. Plan for Coal involves new capital investment of
some £1,000 million on major projects over the period to 1985 in order to
provide capacity of 42 million tons a year, including 20 million tons a year
from new mines, to replace that lost by exhaustion of old collieries. Authorisa¬
tion has already been given for 68 major capital investment projects, costing
a total of over ,£230 million, which will secure 89,000 jobs. In addition, the
NCB has a project costing about ,£4°° million for a mining complex at Selby
(North Yorkshire) which would produce 10 million tons of coal a year. About
,£40 million was invested in the two years to the end of March 1976 in schemes
to exploit reserves off the north-east coast of England.
Although many good seams of coal have now been worked out due to the
early development of the industry, there are still some 45,000 million tons of
known coal deposits judged to be workable, of which about 5,000 million
tons are known to be economically viable. The NCB’s national exploration pro¬
gramme is proving fresh reserves of economically workable coal at the rate
of 500 million tons a year, four times the annual consumption of coal. By
March 1976 there were 23 land exploration rigs in operation.
In 1975 76 the NCB spent ^18-7 million on research. It has two research
organisations: the Coal Research Establishment, at Stoke Orchard, Glouces¬
tershire, concerned with the combustion and utilisation of coal; and the
Mining Research and Development Establishment at Stanhope Bretby,
Staffordshire, for research on mining methods and equipment, including
underground transport and coal preparation. There are also scientific control
staff in the coalfields and a large operational research organisation. Much of
the work of other bodies, such as the Safety in Mines Research Establish¬
ment (SMRE) (see p. 347)> closely related to the board’s problems; the
range of work at the SMRE includes explosions, fires, dust hazards, gas
detection, engineering and metallurgy.
Agreements to exchange technical information have been signed by the
NCB with several countries. Britain is taking the lead in formulating a coal