Get Your Hands Off Our Rocks - Say Scottish Liberal Democrats

12.03.42pm GMT Sun 7th Mar 2010

Fred Mackintosh visiting the Gilmerton Core Store with Professor John Underhill

The Scottish Lib Dems at their Perth Conference have backed the campaign to keep Britain's rock archive in Edinburgh. The motion - proposed by Edinburgh South Parliamentary Candidate Fred Mackintosh - calls on the British Geological Survey to keep the National Offshore Oil and Gas Rock Archive at Gilmerton where it will be safe and most accessible to industry and academic users.

Moving the motion Fred Mackintosh said, "This archive is not just important. It is irreplaceable. These are the crown jewels of British geology and the BGS want to put them on the back of trucks and ship them to Nottinghamshire.

"I visited the store two weeks ago with Professor John Underhill from Edinburgh University. The cores - sections of undersea rocks where order matters - are stored in cardboard boxes about a metre long that cost 4p each. Moving the cores could destroy many of them. 175,000 cores are stored at Gilmerton - with space for decades more.

"The BGS want to move the cores to Nottingham to save around £200,000 a year. If the government was to hire a rig, to respud each well, drill out the plugs and sidetrack (in other words, go down and get another core) would take an average of ten million dollars per well. Doing so would give one rig constant work for about 40 years. We must not take this risk with Scotland's Core."

Speaking in the debate Malcolm Bruce MP for Gordon said, "This proposal is insane and there is absolutely no sensible basis to move these cores. The proposal runs the risk of irreparably damaging the cores for a very small amount of saving."

Writing in the Society's March Newsletter the President of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain Henry Allen has written, "Surely no commercial organisation in its right mind would decide to invest millions of pounds to relocate its service centre 400 km away from where nearly all its customers want it to be, and are used to having it?"