Reuters: Britain seen putting off subsea coal gasification projects

Plans to burn Britain's large reserves of coal to produce gas for power plants may wait for years because of concerns about climate change and a public perception that the technology is similar to fracking.

Cluff Resources, one of the companies trying to develop underground coal gasification in Britain, said the technology is not likely to be deployed for at least another five years, while government officials are tied up with the public opposition to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas.

"The opposition to fracking has caught the government and companies drilling for shale gas by surprise, and it is taking up a lot of their executive time. Accordingly, we need to explain the absolute difference between fracking and the offshore coal gasification technology," the company's chairman, Algy Cluff, said in an interview.  MORE