SOGRA

• Project press release, correspondence, letterhead design, exhibition material and copy of proposal, 1979;
• Presscuttings and press information, 1979.

In the late 1970s the Ben Line Steamers Ltd entered into a joint venture with Liquid Gas Equipment Ltd and Edinburgh Financial and General Holdings Ltd to develop a seabed supported gas fractionation and storage facility at Pan Hope, Flotta, Orkney. The plan, proposed in July 1979, was to outfit 2 large (300-350m in length, 220,000 tons) tankers with gas processing facilities and to then ground them on the seabed in Flotta where they would process natural gas from the North Sea into gases such as ethane, propane, butane and natural gasolene. The plans were rejected by local council members in July 1979 and later due to be reassessed by Orkney Islands Council in August 1979. Just before the meeting with Orkney Islands Council the joint venture group reassessed the cost of the project and, finding it to be more than originally planned, postponed the meeting. The records do not suggest what happened thereafter.

Arranged chronologically within record series.