Work to deliver the infrastructure to serve a new £120 million long-term gas contract in East Yorkshire has had to be adapted after the coronavirus outbreak delayed key deliveries.
Centrica Storage has entered the build phase as it gears up to process gas from the Tolmount field in the southern North Sea.
It was awarded the contract by joint venture partners Premier Oil and Dana Petroleum in 2018, with chief executive Greg McKenna optimistic first gas can still be received in December, as proposed.
Tolmount sits 50km off the Yorkshire coast and a new pipeline will transport the fuel back to shore, emerging within the Easington terminal where it will be processed - before entering the national grid.
Mr McKenna told how it will secure the facility until 2030 at least, with promising indications there may be more gas in the immediate area than the initial 500 billion cubic feet registered.
“It is one of the biggest gas developments in the last couple of years,” he said. “We will process that gas for 10 to 15 years, it secures the jobs of the 80 people operating the terminal.
“The main Tolmount gas field is understood to hold 500 billion cubic feet, but in the Greater Tolmount area - they think there could be more gas outside the field - they are busy exploring and have just recently made another discovery. That could be one trillion cubic feet.”
In context, the whole of the 海角视频 uses three trillion cubic feet annually, but it would be extracted at a rate of 250 million to 300 million cubic feet a day, enough to supply 2.5 million homes.
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Mr McKenna said work has slowed but schedules have been adapted to fill voids in the supply chain brought about through pandemic lockdown.
“A lot of equipment is coming from Italy, we have over 1,000 valves and six major packages coming from Europe,” he said, with the country the first in Europe to be badly hit. “We have had to rearrange and reschedule work. It has slowed things down, but we are still trying to make the December date for first gas.
“Italy is starting to lift restrictions, some of the companies are back to work on Monday, so hopefully we will see some stuff moving.”
Construction at Easington includes upgrades to compression facilities, and improvements to the control room to allow it to be operated from there. In the field four wells are being drilled with an unmanned topside platform to be operated from the terminal. The process engaged at one of three plants in the East Yorkshire cluster involves removing water and a light oil condensate, drying and compressing.
A total of 300,000 construction hours are envisaged bringing forward the infrastructure, and managing this - with peaks of 200 people on site - is another huge factor that has been transformed by the outbreak.
“We have more than 100 people on site and have put a whole bunch of measures in place such as social distancing, extra office space to spread people out, temperature checks and lots and lots of hand sanitiser,” Mr McKenna said. “We are also introducing infra-red cameras at security gates to monitor people coming in and out. There are pre-visit questionnaires, with only essential visits permitted, even meal times are completely changing, from a queue to be served to pre-order and a sit and deliver service.
“We have had the Health and Safety Executive come to see us so we could show them our systems and processes, and there had been a lot of communication with staff. It is a big team effort from all, we’re all working together and it is good that we have got a common purpose to keep gas flowing. People are very aware of that.”
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From Easington, Centrica also operates Rough - a manned platform from where gas is still being brought onshore - while also acting for the York field, controlled by Spirit Energy, in which it has a significant stake in.
“We have another 100 people working offshore at Rough too, where gyms and cinema rooms have had to close with canteens operating differently as well,” Mr McKenna said, acknowledging it was a challenging environment with the impact on valued recreation time, and holding the offshore team in the highest regard. “They know they are doing the right thing, by themselves, by their families and for the country in keeping the lights on,” he added.
Non-plant based activity for Centrica Storage moved from Hedon to Hessle’s Bridgehead Business Park in 2017.
A year later it actually stopped the 'storage' element - for which it was using a section of exhausted Rough - due to the emergence and subsequent proliferation of liquefied natural gas tankers pricing it out of the market, together with aging infrastructure in the field.