A FOSSIL fuel exploration firm says it could help ease spikes in gas prices after being awarded the rights to a large area off the North Yorkshire coast.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has given Egdon Resources a four-year licence covering an area of up to 200sq km near Robin Hood’s Bay as part of a scheme which could create scores of jobs.

The site was drilled by Total in 1966 and was one of the earliest wells to discover hydrocarbons in the North Sea, with gas at rates of up to 2.5 million cubic feet per day.

However, the gas flow rates were too slow for a commercial operation with 1960s technologies.

Extracting gas would have needed a costly platform to be built, which would have been unlikely to have been granted permission off the Jurassic coastline.

Egdon’s managing director Mark Abbott said if tests confirmed its prospective gas resources estimate of up to 272 billion cubic feet of gas, he would seek consent late next year to drill a well from an onshore location to appraise the discovery made by the 1966 well.

The firm sparked controversy last year after being granted permission to sink a gas testing borehole at Westerdale, in the North York Moors National Park, near Great Ayton.

Mr Abbott said should the offshore plan go ahead, it would not involve controversial techniques such as fracking to release the gas.

He said it would employ about 30 people at a screened onshore site and lead to further associated jobs in the area.

Mr Abbott, whose firm is set to bring the Kirkleatham Gas Field, in Redcar, into production this year, said: “At the moment we import more than 50 per cent of the gas we use in the UK, where six years ago we were self-sufficient.

“The UK uses huge amounts of natural gas on a daily basis, and while this offshore site would provide only a small proportion of that over some time it would bring a tax benefit to the chancellor of the exchequer, could help ease spikes in gas prices and improve Britain’s balance of payments.”