Planned to be built approximately 20km north of the Empress natural gas liquids (NGL) complex, the salt cavern facility is designed to have capacity to store approximately 1 million barrels of ethane.
The facility will be connected to Veresen’s Alberta Ethane Gathering System through a pipeline.
Veresen president and CEO Don Althoff said: "Veresen is committed to building the best connected network of natural gas and NGL infrastructure within our geographic footprint and delivering on this opportunity demonstrates our strategy in action.
"The Burstall facility will provide our customers with valuable operational storage as ethane imports to Empress from the North Dakota Bakken grow, and we are excited to add another project to our portfolio of secured growth opportunities."
A 20-yer agreement has also been signed by Veresen with Nova Chemicals whereby the latter plans to use the majority of the storage capacity.
Veresen plans to commission the facility in the second half of 2018 upon securing final regulatory approvals.
The facility is expected to contribute annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) between $15m and $18m.
In October, Cutbank Ridge Partnership, a partnership between Encana and Cutbank Dawson Gas Resources, has approved the $860m Sunrise gas plant planned to be built in the Montney region near Dawson Creek in northeastern British Columbia.
Veresen Midstream, which is equally owned by Veresen and affiliates of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), signed a fee-for-service arrangement in 2014 with Encana and CRP to invest up to $5bn in new midstream expansion projects in the Montney region.
The 400 million cubic feet per day (mmcf/d) Sunrise gas plant marks the first approved project under the deal.
