The £600m Gateway Gas Storage project has received the first gas storage licence to be issued by the UK Government under a new regime designed to encourage the construction of new storage facilities in this country. The licence has been issued under the auspices of the 2008 Energy Act and it consolidates the main environmental and planning consents that were given to the project by the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the UK Marine & Fisheries Agency in November 2008.

George Grant, Chairman of Gateway Storage Company said, 'The support and encouragement given by DECC to bring the Gateway Storage project forward has been invaluable, as was the Crown Estate's agreement of the offshore site licence. We are now fully engaged with the project's engineering design and are targeting 2014 for the start of commercial storage operations.'

The Gateway facility will add new capacity equal to approximately 30% of current UK storage capacity, sufficient to meet five days of Britain's average gas demand. Gateway will be built in 20 salt caverns, each the size of the Albert Hall, and sited approximately 750m beneath the surface of the seabed. Located 15 miles offshore, south west of Barrow-in-Furness, the storage scheme will be connected to the National Gas Transmission System via a new pipeline to a gas compression station adjacent to the existing Morecambe gas terminals at Barrow.

Tags: Gateway Gas Storage