Scotsman: Fife-based Thornton New Energy has gone into partnership with an Australian company to extract energy from coal seams lying deep under the estuary inaccessible to conventional mining techniques. The technique – underground coal gasification (UCG) – involves pumping oxygen and steam down a borehole into the seam, where heating under controlled conditions extracts gases from the coal. The gases are then pumped ashore to be used to generate electricity. Talks will take place this …