Coal seams were discovered at Drumglass, near Coalisland, in the 1690s, and the Tyrone coalfields were seen as a way to reduce the amount of coal imported to Dublin, then amounting to between 60,000 and 70,000 tons per year.
Although the proposal made by Myers was adopted by Parliament in 1767, and £5,000 granted towards its cost, it was superseded by a plan submitted by Daviso Du Arcort, a Sardinian, otherwise known as Davis Dukart, after a second opinion on the engineering aspects of the project was sought.