Following the submission of its planning application, Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, will lay out to interested parties and members of the public its plans to convert the Bains gas field in the East Irish Sea, into a dedicated seasonal storage facility nearly one-fifth the size of Rough, UK’s largest gas storage site.
If the proposed development progresses, the facility could be available to come online for gas production and injection in the winter of 2012, with a storage capacity of up to 20 billion cubic feet, said Centrica.
The Bains project proposes to convert the existing partly depleted Bains field, five miles north east of Centrica’s South Morecambe field, to a storage facility with a 20-mile pipeline to the Barrow onshore terminal.
According to the company, a new unmanned platform and additional gas processing facilities within the existing South Morecambe Terminal would be required. Reservoir characteristics of the existing Bains field indicate a storage facility could offer flexibility to inject and produce gas at short notice.
John Woodings, Bains’s onshore project manager for Centrica, said: We believe Bains has potential as a gas storage facility, being close to existing gas production infrastructure and having the right reservoir characteristics.
As the UK becomes reliant on imported gas and flexibility from North Sea fields declines in the coming years, investing in storage facilities, which will boost this country’s security of supply, forms part of Centrica’s long term program of investing in a range of gas, power and renewable projects to supply our British Gas customers.
