The advent of North Sea exploration and the active oil industry drove the British Gas industry also which saw rapid changes as technical advances were made.

Two ships, the Methane Princess and Methane Progress were brought into service in 1963, to import liquefied natural gas from Algeria at the rate of 300,000 tons per year. In addition a high pressure pipeline was constructed to transport this gas from the Canvey Island terminal as far north as Leeds.

Surveys in the North Sea had indicated the enormous potential of accessing undersea reserves of natural gas in addition to oil. In 1966 the government agreed a decision to convert Britain to natural gas, and a year later this prompted the first North Sea gas to be landed at Easington terminal.

During a ten-year national conversion programme every appliance in the country had to be converted from town gas, as the local manufactured gas was called, to run on North Sea natural gas. This involved engineer visits to 13 millions homes and the nations factories and in total 34 million appliances were converted.

The start of the 1970s saw the development of the gas transportation system with the opening of a national control centre at Hinckley, Leicester.  This facility was to manage the operation of the developing high-pressure distribution system across the country.

The 1972 Gas Act paved the way for far more centralisation of the industry with the creation of the British Gas Corporation. From 1973, the 12 old gas boards became regions.  These were noe responsible for a specific geographical area and they were given new names to confirm their new status.

Offshore exploration work continued, not only in the North Sea, and in 1974 gas was discovered in the west of the country in Morecambe Bay. Commercial development of the field was given the go-ahead in 1978.

In the following decade privatisation was the main issue for the industry.  The 1982 Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act give the Government the power to dispose of British Gas assets and force the opening up the corporation’s pipelines to third-party suppliers. This laid the foundations for a more open industry and the introduction of competition.

These moves came to fruition in 1986 when the Gas Act returned the gas industry to the private sector and the company name changed to British Gas Plc. On 8th December 1986, £9 billion worth of shares were floated on stock markets around the world to private shareholders known as SIDs.

At the same time Ofgas was formed to regulate the industry and protect the interest of customers in this competitive market.