Last week Contact Energy announced it had postponed plans for a third Auckland gas-fired station, while fellow gas and electricity company, Genesis Power, earlier this week said it was powering ahead in spite of Contact.
Natural Gas Corporation now says it's neither canning its plans nor pressing ahead with the possible doubling of its generation capacity at Stratford, Taranaki.
"Natural Gas Corporation has not made a decision on whether to expand its Taranaki Combined Cycle Power Station by up to 500MW, but is proceeding through the resource consents procedure in the meantime," said NGC spokesman Keith FitzPatrick in Wellington.
NGC believed electricity demand was growing by about 2% per annum and that new generation capacity was likely to be needed around 2005-06, with further capacity required around the end of the decade, FitzPatrick said.
"However, NGC has set no timeframe for making a decision on the TCC expansion and will take account of generation supply and market demand factors at the time.
"Gas sourcing will be an important consideration," he added. NGC owns all of the 375MW TCC plant in Taranaki and 50% of the smaller gas-fired Southdown station in Auckland. The rest of NGC's generation capacity is small hydro stations.
Last week Contact chief executive Steve Barrett said the development of its third 400MWgas-fired power station at its Otahuhu, Auckland, site would not go ahead until sufficient gas supplies were guaranteed and problems with the transmission regime applying to new gas had been sorted out.
However, earlier this week Genesis chief executive Murray Jackson confirmed from Auckland that Genesis Power was still evaluating options for a 400MW combined cycle gas power station to be operating at Huntly from December 2004. He said clearing of the site for the proposed new plant would start in the second half of this year.
Contact and NGC are both Maui gas wholesalers and involved in the critical Maui redetermination process, which started last month but could take the rest of the year, or possibly longer to resolve.
Last September, field owner Maui Development Ltd shocked the nation by saying this country's biggest energy resource could be depleted as early as mid-2007 and not the contracted 2009.
Any downward redetermination of remaining allocations of Maui gas could impact significantly on NGC and Contact.
Genesis Power, however, is not involved in the Maui redetermination process and is pinning its hopes on the undeveloped offshore Kupe gas-condensate field south of Taranaki. It recently increased its stake in that field to 70% and, along with New Zealand Oil and Gas and the government, is looking to soon appoint an operator for the Kupe mining licence.
