Huge underground gas storage plant in pipeline on East Coast

Councillors are expected to give the green light this week to plans for a massive new gas storage development on the East Coast.

E.ON UK is looking to gain formal planning permission for the facility, which will have 10 underground storage caverns, at Whitehill Farm, near Withernwick.

The caverns, which will be used to store gas at times of low demand and sell it back to the National Grid when there is peak demand, are part of a bid to protect supplies for 20 million UK customers.

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Plans for the development have been in the pipeline for five years.

A Commons select committee last year said the amount of gas storage nationally needed to be doubled to avoid price hikes and energy interruptions – and in the longer term ensure a supply to the gas plants needed to provide “back-up” to the vast arrays of offshore and onshore wind turbines generating intermittent energy.

Construction will bring hundreds of workers to the area and come as a boost to local businesses, which previously benefited from the sprawling development of nine caverns at nearby Aldbrough by Southern and Scottish Energy.

However, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has objected to the industrialisation of an “undisturbed rural area” and believes the developers could do more to create wildlife habitats.

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Before the gas storage project begins a new temporary haul road will be built between Great Hatfield Road and the B1242 with other improvements made to local roads.

The committee, which meets at County Hall on Thursday, will be told of various changes to plans, following an internal engineering review.

Instead of a single wellhead compound, there will now be three and provision for drilling up to 12 wells to make sure E.ON gets 10 operational wells in the end.

The caverns will be formed out of salt deposits some 1.8km underground by pumping in pressurised seawater and then discharging the brine back into the sea.

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Each cavern will be up to 100m in diameter and store up to 750m cubic metres of gas.

Withernwick Parish Council is asking for steps to minimise the impact of noise and light pollution from the development, which will take years to build, and wants the developer to pay for an independent organisation to undertake noise level monitoring.

Aldbrough parish council wants the application refused as the developers don’t say how close the wellheads will be to the village – a move supported by East Garton parish council. Ellerby parish council supports the proposals.

Planners are recommending that the project is given the go-ahead, subject to the signing of a legal agreement, which would require the developer to fund road improvements, set up a local liaison group and make a financial contribution to the North Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority.

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Last October a Commons select committee said the Department of Energy and Climate Change “should be concerned about the lack of gas storage used to manage seasonal demand fluctuations. It should aim to double the UK’s current gas storage levels by 2020 in order to avoid exposure to gas supply interruptions and price spikes and in the longer term to ensure a resilient gas supply to flexible gas plants acting as a ‘back-up’ to intermittent electricity generated by wind.”

By the end of this decade it is estimated that the UK will get up to 70 per cent of its gas through European pipelines and liquified natural gas which is bought in by sea.

E.ON said: “The Whitehill Gas Storage project is currently in planning and we await to hear the result for our onshore and offshore consent and licence applications. We continue to review the options for development of the site in the context of the current and future gas market.

“It is our expectation that a final investment decision will not be taken earlier than 2013.”

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