A NEW £600m gas storage facility off the Furness coast was given the go-ahead by the government today.
The Gateway Project will create 20 new salt caverns each the size of the Albert Hall under the Irish Sea.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change today issued the first licence to the project under a new regime to encourage the construction of more gas storage.
Gateway would be built approximately 750 metres beneath the surface of the seabed and located 15 miles south west of Barrow.
The company will store enough gas to give the UK an extra five days supply in times of shortage.
The gas will be run out by the undersea pipeline from Barrow in the summer and then stored in the giant caverns until it is needed in the winter.
Barrow’s Rampside gas complex will be enlarged with a new compression complex – although only a handful of permanent jobs are expected to be created by the development.
Barrow Borough Council has already approved the work at Rampside, which will include a new pipe coming ashore.
The storage facility will add new capacity equal to approximately 30 per cent of current UK storage capacity.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said:
“The successful performance of the UK’s gas system, even during the severely cold weather seen this winter, shows that we have one of the most resilient gas systems in the world.
“But we do want to encourage more gas storage capacity, like Gateway, to provide flexibility in the future at times of high demand.
“This shows the Energy Act 2008 is proving its worth by enabling the government to license an important new gas storage project.”
George Grant, chairman of Gateway Storage Company, said: “The support and encouragement given by DECC to bring the Gateway Storage project forward through the new consenting process has been invaluable, as was the Crown Estate’s agreement of the offshore site licence.
“We are now fully engaged with the project’s engineering design and are targeting 2014 for the start of commercial storage operations.”
The Crown Estate, which has already agreed and issued the lease for the Gateway project, welcomed the decision.
Another gas storage scheme, Centrica’s Bains field, and a huge liquid natural gas import project – Port Meridian proposed by Danish energy firm Höegh LNG AS – are also planned for the Irish Sea off Barrow, making use of Barrow gas terminal.
In the longer term, depleted Centrica gas fields off Barrow might be used for carbon capture to help combat climate change.
