Company chief executive Murray Jackson told a power conference in Wellington yesterday that Genesis could take the three gas turbines planned for Whirinaki and convert them into a gas-fired combined cycle station with greater efficiency and capacity. Output from a gas-fired station could be as much as 250MW, compared with 115MW from the planned fuel oil-fired plant.
Jackson said Genesis already had two offers of sites in Taranaki for development of its station. The turbines would cost about $NZ150 million and another $NZ100 million would be needed to implement the combined cycle technology.
Earlier this month the government announced it planned to develop and own a 155MW oil-fired station at Whirinaki, near Napier, to be used as reserve power for "very dry years." However, it said it intended to be an "interim" owner only and was evaluating other sites, particularly in the South Island, for the "reserve power" system it wants operating by next June.
Contact Energy has resource consents to develop a power station at Whirinaki, though it does not want to take the commercial risk, so is offering to project manage and operate Whirinaki for the government, as well as leasing the site to the Crown.
Jackson said Genesis would offer to replace the Whirinaki "reserve" capacity with capacity from its dual-fueled 1000MW Huntly station or, perhaps, later from the 350MW combined cycle, gas-fired plant it planned to have operating at Huntly by April, 2006.
Jackson warned, as did his business development manager Frank Geoghegan in New Plymouth last week, that if there were no further significant gas discoveries in the next two to three years, Genesis would have to consider importing liquefied natural gas.
He said an early decision on the importation of LNG, which could cost $NZ7.00-8.00 a Gigajoule, was imperative, as Genesis used 50-70 Petajoules of gas a year and need certainty of supply.
Jackson added that supplementing local gas supplies with imported LNG could extend the life of the Pohokura and Kupe gas fields by up to 10 years.
