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Pipelines line up for offshore gas action
NOVA SCOTIA IS STARTING TO feel like a wallflower whose hidden attractions are discovered and suddenly has rich beaus tripping over themselves to ask her to the ball. With offshore naturalgas potential rated at up to 100 trillion cubic feet driving as many as six deep-water exploration wells costing $50 million each over the next year, pipelines have begun lining up for action.
After two years as the only transportation show around, Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline accelerated its expansion plans. Houston-based El Paso Corp. arrived on the scene promising that if the drilling pays off, it was prepared to spend $2.5 billion on an entirely new sea-floor gas delivery system. Titled the Blue Atlantic Transmission System, the plan calls for a 1,200-kilometre pipeline reaching as far as New Jersey to be built by 2005.
El Paso planned to spend up to $30 million over the next 18 months preparing construction plans for the one-billion-cubic-feet-daily system. Jay Holm, chief executive officer of El Paso's eastern pipeline group, said the line would feed Nova Scotia gas to a multitude of electricity plants now under construction in New York and New Jersey while also supplementing...