I READ with interest last week’s Review and especially the front page article headed Stop the Gas Man.

FOOF spokesman, Owen Adams, announced that this organisation was getting aroused to prevent coal bed methane exploration and development in the Forest of Dean coal field.

Now, before I go any further, I will state that I do not advocate fracking in our Forest area.

Believe me, this is never going to happen as all methane that was generated in the creation of the coal seams during the Carboniferous geological period has long since leached out to atmosphere millions of years ago.

To prove this point, you only have to go back to the closure of the last NCB pit in the Forest of Dean in 1965 where naked carbide lights were commonly used everywhere underground.

You certainly do not use naked lights in coal seams that produced methane – unless you like explosions.

The coal field was also worked right down to the deepest part of the synclinal basin and no methane was ever encountered.

The majority of the Forest’s coal seamshave been commercially worked out and even where there are small areas of unworked, uneconomical beds of coal, had they contained methane they would not be worth the effort of a single test drilling.

I think that if Mr Gerwyn Williams, of South Western Energy, decides to drill a single test well into the area of the coal seams then he will be throwing all his organisation’s money away.

If you ask any of the few remaining old miners if they knew of anywhere they encountered methane gas, and the reply will be: nowhere.

Granting of a licence is one thing, but wasting money on a fruitless speculative venture is quite another.

By all means, FOOF, keep fighting but you will never see Mr Williams drilling in the Forest of Dean.

– Dave Tuffley, Cinderford.