Transfer will turn archive to 'worthless piles of sand'

HUNDREDS of thousands of rocks millions of years old will be reduced to "worthless piles of sand" if plans to transport them from Edinburgh to Nottinghamshire go ahead, a geology expert warned today.

Professor John Underhill of Edinburgh University's School of GeoSciences said the UK's national core rock archive, currently housed in Gilmerton, was at serious risk if the British Geological Survey (BGS) insisted on carrying out its plan to relocate the collection.

Scotland's Energy Minister, Jim Mather, has asked his UK counterpart to intervene and force BGS bosses to meet those concerned about the move before deciding to press on.

The archive, worth 5 billion, has been gathered over the past four decades by the oil industry as it drills deep into the seabed.

Professor Underhill said there was still decades of spare capacity at Gilmerton, but the BGS wants to centralise the collection at a purpose-built facility at Keyworth.

The plans have prompted protests from academics, the oil industry and politicians.

Professor Underhill said Scotland was not only the centre of the UK's North Sea oil industry, but was also in the lead on the new "green" technology of carbon capture and storage, for which the archive was also a crucial source of information.

He said he had taken independent advice on what would be needed to transport the rocks and samples to the East Midlands safely. "They could guarantee the integrity of the collection if they spent millions of pounds on the transfer, but that has not been factored into the equation," he warned.

He said if the BGS went ahead with its current plans for the archive, it would set off as valuable rocks "and end up at this village in Nottinghamshire as worthless piles of sand".

He said the BGS timetable of 18 months for moving the 142,000 rocks and 173,000 samples was also unrealistic.

"That would allow just one minute to take a rock off the storage rack, photograph it, repackage it, and load it on to a lorry."

Mr Mather said the BGS played a key role in Scotland's energy economy. But he said: "It has failed to listen and respond adequately to the concerns put forward by industry, academia, MSPs and the Scottish Government. It has not engaged with its customer base and failed to offer a resolution meeting, despite assurances from UK ministers to the contrary. Uncertainty still surrounds the business case presented for the transfer."

The BGS said the transfer of cores and samples was planned to commence "shortly". A spokeswoman said it was currently in discussion with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on exact timings.