Natural Gas

Progress Eenrgy has gotten the green-light from the North Carolina Utilities Commission to build a natural gas-fired power plant in Richmond County, North Carolina. The company still has to get an air permit from the state and that review is under way.

The move does signal a continued strength of natural gas as the fuel of choice for power generation in the U.S.

Plans for the plant were officially announced in October 2007 and the project will cost anywhere from $700 million to $750 million. Part of the costs includes a 64-mile, 230-kW transmission line between the power plant and a substation in Cumberland count, North Carolina. The utilities commission has not ruled on the transmission line, saying it is a separate project.

To meet the scheduled June 2011 operations date, Progress Energy reports site preparation must begin by early 2009 and construction will begin after the company gets the air permit from the state. The Richmond County Energy Complex will be built near Hamlet, N.C.

The area the plant will service is expected to grow by more than 20,000 houses and businesses this year.

The planned Richmond County project is an intermediate-level electrical generation supply, meaning it will operate 20% to 60% of the time to meet customer demand. The plant will use combined-cycle technology, where exhaust heat is captured and used to generate additional electrical power.

Stay tuned. More to come. The use of natural gas for electrical generation as a clean-burning and fairly environmentally friendly fuel is one of the few things that everyone–industry, government and environmental leaders–can agree on. Now, they just have to make sure there is enough supply to power these new plants.

–John A. Sullivan, News Editor, Oil and Gas Investor, www.OilandGasInvestor.com, jsullivan@hartenergy.com

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