@Benga - they (SGC) say they have an 'initial potential' to pump...

@Benga - they (SGC) say they have an 'initial potential' to pump 3 to 5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day so the gas is there alright, though I have no idea as to what quantity of hydrogen gas they could produce from this. They should have made this clear in the announcement.

The reason they changed tack on hooking it up is due to an unforseen capacity restriction :-

Rationale for Selection of Borba Location
Following on from reviews of pipeline operating incidents, the local pipeline network owner recently imposed severe volume restrictions on the previously identified pipeline route for Borba natural gas. This restriction would have resulted in the Borba production being curtailed indefinitely to well below its potential.

So it looks like the owner of the pipeline did an investigation into operational incidents (one could assume H&S comes into it at the very least) and decided to restrict Borba's flow until they (pipeline owners) sorted their house out. No fault of XST/SGC so they're trying to come up with the blue hydrogen solution which will be commercially viable and this way they'll be in control of their own production without the local restrictions imposed by the pipeline.
Of course this is just the beginning (again) and they still need customers for when they begin production and although this 'plug & play' idea seems to be too simple of a solution, they reckon it works.

Put it this way....IF they had already hooked up to the pipeline and this restriction came into play afterwards, that could well have been a financial disaster. At least that's been avoided for now.

Down the line if the pipeline owner sorts out their operational problems, they might well release this restriction and we could end up 'burning the candle from both ends' ...