A PROPOSAL to drill a borehole in the heart of the North York Moors National Park to test for natural gas has been condemned as an inappropriate industrial intrusion.

Egdon Resources, a stock market-listed oil and gas exploration and production firm, has submitted an application for planning consent to sink a well and create two access tracks on land south of Broad Gate Farm, Westerdale, near Great Ayton.

The firm, which sank a borehole close to the site in 2006, in what proved to be an unsuccessful bid to find gas, said the tests would involve laterally drilling into what it hopes is a reservoir and if there is a commercial quantity of gas it would be extracted through natural pressure and piped to a plant in the Teesside area.

As the scheme is at an exploratory stage it is not known how many jobs could be created if a gas reservoir was found and it got the go-ahead.

The application to the North York Moors National Park Authority, which will be considered on July 19, follows changes to the firm’s plans to close a bridleway next to the site in response to comments received at a public exhibition in Westerdale Village Hall.

Egdon managing director Mark Abbottt said he had been buoyed by the “very positive attitude by the public to the proposals as a whole” at the exhibition.

He said there was a general acceptance by people living in the area of the need to exploit local recoverable gas resources and people said they had been impressed by the firm’s restoration of its 2006 borehole site.

However, Tom Chadwick, chairman of the North Yorkshire Moors Association, said the borehole would blot an attractive landscape, which is surrounded by designated sites of Special Scientific Interest and Special Protection Areas.

Mr Chadwick said the application was particularly unwelcome because Sirius Minerals was continuing to develop a huge potash mine on the moors near Whitby, and the results of a public inquiry into Moorland Energy’s bid to build a gas plant in the park, near Thornton-le-Dale were due later this month.

He said: “We have a serious concern about this latest proposal as it is almost like a permanent development, because if Egdon is successful in locating this reserve they won’t be going anywhere else to produce it.

“It feels like the national park is under siege. It’s outrageous that the North York Moors could be reduced by these developments.”