Energy services company Piedmont Natural Gas is planning to build and operate a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Robeson County, North Carolina in the US, with an investment of $250m.
Image: A Duke Energy’s LNG plant. Photo: courtesy of Duke Energy Corporation.
The facility is expected to help the firm to continue providing customers with natural gas during winter, when extremely low temperatures create a higher-than-normal demand for natural gas.
With a storage capacity of 1 billion-cubic-foot (Bcf), the LNG facility will cover roughly 50 acres of a 685-acre piece of Piedmont-owned property.
Piedmont Natural Gas, a unit of Duke Energy, is planning to commence construction of the plant in the summer of 2019 and complete in the summer of 2021.
Piedmont Natural Gas natural gas operations president Frank Yoho said: “We continually make investments in our natural gas infrastructure as part of our commitment to providing safe, reliable and affordable natural gas for our customers.
“This facility is the most cost-effective solution to meet peak-day demand.”
Expected to deliver immediate and significant economic benefits to the regional communities and help boost economic growth, the project will create up to 400 local jobs during the two-year construction phase and up to 10 to 12 permanent jobs upon commissioning.
Additionally, the project is expected to provide approximately $800,000 to $1m in tax revenue annually to Robeson County.
Robeson County manager Ricky Harris said: “This project marks an important economic development opportunity for our county, and we’re looking forward to working with Piedmont Natural Gas in an open, transparent manner throughout this process.”
The project will be the Piedmont’s fourth LNG facility while the other three are located in Nashville, Tennessee, Bentonville, North Carolina, and Huntersville, North Carolina.
Piedmont Natural Gas is engaged in distribution of natural gas to more than 1 million customers. It also operates power plants, in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Employing 29,000 people, Duke Energy has generating capacity of 49,500MW and has assets in US, Canada and Latin America.