And more coverage and quotes from JG ...
Bear Head starts design work
With provincial environmental approval in hand, the company proposing to build a liquefied natural gas export facility outside Port Hawkesbury is moving on to the next step in its development.
Earlier this week, Nova Scotia Environment Minister Randy Delorey granted environmental assessment approval for the Bear Head LNG Corp. facility, which could have the capacity to move eight million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually.
With provincial environmental approval in hand, the company proposing to build a liquefied natural gas export facility outside Port Hawkesbury is moving on to the next step in its development.
Earlier this week, Nova Scotia Environment Minister Randy Delorey granted environmental assessment approval for the Bear Head LNG Corp. facility, which could have the capacity to move eight million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually.
More approvals will be needed, but this is the last of the 10 initial federal, provincial and local regulatory approvals needed to construct the export facility at Point Tupper.
“
We certainly expected it; we think that the project is very well engineered, very well thought out, and we think we had submitted a very strong environmental assessment, but it’s always nice to get confirmation of that,” said John Godbold, project director of Bear Head LNG, whose parent company is Australia’s Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd.
The company has hired KBR Inc. of Houston to undertake front-end engineering and design work, the next step in the process to becoming operational by 2019.
“
That’s kicking off very shortly,” Godbold said. “So that’s a key piece, and then the next key piece is working on pipeline interconnectivity to source our feed gas for the project.”
The provincial approval comes with
32 conditions, some requiring further scrutiny, including producing several management, monitoring and contingency plans for air emissions, greenhouse gases, noise, birds, wildlife, traffic and water sources.
“
Frankly, we’ve already started to draft a lot of these plans because we knew that they were coming,” Godbold said.
The proposed project has its critics. Catherine Abreu, energy co-ordinator with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, has stated that the project could increase provincial emissions by 10 per cent over 2012 levels.
Godbold acknowledged that there will be “incremental emissions” but said the company has selected optimized single mixed refrigerant technology, intended to limit emissions.
“We could have made a decision that we had zero emissions and used electric-drive motors, but that would have required us to buy power off of … mostly a coal-fired electric generation grid. So from a perspective of emissions, we think that … we are using a beyond-no-regrets technology, which really is the best technology out there in the industry.”
One of the questions surrounding the project is where the gas will be sourced from. Godbold said the environmental approval is a positive signal to the market that could lead to more interested parties, but he declined to divulge any potential clients or gas sources.
“
All of those discussions and agreements and negotiations are highly confidential, at this point, but all I can say is that WE ARE MOVING VERY QUICKLY WITH A LOT OF VERY INTERESTED PARTIES.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1287956-bear-head-starts-design-work
That says it all to me.
Go BH!