An Australian company has produced electricity from natural gas recovered from coal seams in Scotland, the Herald Scotland newspaper has reported.

The next phase of the project by Dart Energy will be to build surface infrastructure, including compression facilities and pipeline connections, at the site near Airth, Stirlingshire.

The coal bed methane (CBM) project could produce top daily rates of more than a million standard cubic feet (scf) of gas per well but the current generator at two pilot wells is restricted to 100,000 scf per day.

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Dart, which has its European headquarters in Stirling, is due to start a sales deal with SSE next April.

This will cover the annual delivery of about 11bn cubic feet of gas for up to eight years.

The UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change has given the go-ahead for development consent, and updated technical plans are expected to be approved in the third quarter of 2012.

The company is expected to spend more than £50m developing the project over the next 18 months.

John McGoldrick, Dart chief executive, said: "The first electricity generation is quite a major achievement. It represents the company's first commercial sales, and continues the progression of our Airth Project towards full development and substantial revenue generation. It is the first coal bed methane project in the UK and we are looking forward to expanding the whole operation there. It is really our flagship capacity and hope to have gas compression in place by next summer."

(NE)