Genesis told EnergyReview.net today it planned to sidestep the Maui pipeline and ask NGC to upgrade its Taranaki-to-Auckland Kapuni line.
“We have been involved in this project for about six months and realised pipeline capacity from Taranaki to Auckland could be upgraded,” Genesis chief executive Murray Jackson said.
“So, with a few compressor stations, a gas spur line, and a few new 22kV power lines we will be able to provide the reactive power that the Auckland region badly needs.”
Jackson said the company’s new NZ$520 million power station, E3P (Energy Efficiency Enhancement Project), being built at Huntly, south of Auckland, would "keep the lights on in Auckland" and would eventually replace the existing Huntly station.
The new project planned north of Auckland would provide the power for the city’s growing number of air conditioning units and heat pumps.
“This will be the most significant, most critical investment in the New Zealand energy and infrastructure sectors for a long time.”
When asked if Genesis had avoided the Maui pipeline because open-access issues have still to be resolved, Jackson said there was nothing deliberate in choosing the Kapuni line over the larger Maui one.
At present, only Maui gas is legally allowed to be transported in the Maui pipeline from Taranaki to Huntly.
Genesis previously said it was considering building the NZ$500 million combined-cycle, gas-fired power station near the Kaipara Harbour north of Auckland.
The company was investigating potential sites in the Helensville-Wellsford-Silverdale areas as their proximity to gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines made them attractive.
A Kaipara station could have initial capacity of approximately 240 megawatts – which would limited by current gas pipeline capacity – but could have an ultimate capacity of 360MW if increased gas supplies to the plant were possible.
Jackson today said Genesis hoped to call for tenders to build the Kaipara station next July and to have it operating from mid-2008.
He was confident the onshore Taranaki Cardiff prospect could provide enough power for the new station and that he’d be happy if there were approximately 400 petajoules of recoverable reserves, which could fuel a 360MW plant for up to 20 years.
PEP 38738 operator Austral Pacific Energy is about to production test three fracced Eocene-aged Kapuni formation intervals at the Cardiff-2A well, which has the potential to contain over 300PJ of gas.
Meanwhile, energy minister Trevor Mallard – addressing the NGC Winter Lecture series in Wellington last night – said the news of the Kaipara power plant was “an interesting development”.
Genesis – one of three state-owned energy companies – had not come to the government to ask for money, nor for any guarantees around gas supply as it had for E3P, according to Mallard.
The minister that the first priority for gas should be direct household use rather than building more gas-fired power stations, as this could make a big difference both to water heating and peak power use.
A substantial proportion of government-owned generation was in renewables – principally hydro, but wind power was also growing rapidly.
"Renewable generation must be our number one long-term target," Mallard said.
“We need to meet our international climate change obligations and eventually, we need to wean ourselves off our dependency on oil.”
