tapping into natural resources

...beautiful sunshine this morning, which lasted nearly all day. Before lunch, we went for one of our Kimmeridge walks and, it has to be said, it was windy!

Kimmeridge Bay is another good place, locally, to see ammonites, which can be found in some numbers on the Jurassic shale ledges that extend into the sea. The shales themselves are oil rich plus there are oil reservoirs below. On the bay's west cliff, is an oil well that has been pumping continually since the late 1950s. Its present output is about 65 barrels per day. Oil extraction has been taking place for decades in our part of Dorset but reserves are dwindling year on year.

An entirely different natural energy resource is currently being proposed in the form of a massive off-shore wind farm beyond Swanage Bay. Navitus Bay Development Limited, is in the early stages of submitting its plans and gaining approval, but a possible configuration would be 171 turbines, each 189m tall. The proposals have sparked some heated debate, not least what this might mean to the UNESCO Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site status. UNESCO are being approached to establish whether the wind farm could result in the 153km Jurassic coast losing its world heritage site status, which would significantly affect tourism in Dorset and East Devon.

There is a very interesting website with animations showing how it might look, here...

The long cliff that can be seen beyond the grassy plateau across the bay, is Gad Cliff and, out of sight just behind that, is the ghost village of Tyneham. All the visible land on the other side of the Bay is in the hands of the Ministry of Defence and, for most of the year, is out of bounds on weekdays. It is, however open most weekends and has some wonderful walking over it...