Jacobs Engineering Awarded Contract for U.K. Gas Storage Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Jacobs Engineering Group Incorporated (NYSE:JEC) (Pasadena, California) recently announced that it has been awarded the engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) contract by underground storage specialists Storengy UK Limited (Northwich, England), a wholly owned subsidiary of natural gas and electricity company GDF Suez SA (EPA:GSZ) (Paris, France). Under the terms of the contract, Jacobs will develop the aboveground infrastructure associated with a new gas storage facility being developed at Stublach in northwest England. The work involves the design and installation of new gas treatment and compression facilities, a control system and the necessary utilities. Jacobs' Manchester office will implement the contract.

When completed, the salt cavern natural gas storage facility at Stublach will have a storage capacity of up to 400 million cubic meters, making it one of the largest such facilities in the U.K. Construction of the facility began in 2007. Developed with an estimated investment of £350 million ($521.6 million), the facility will include 28 salt caverns. The first cavern is scheduled to begin operations in 2013, and the facility is expected to be fully operational by 2018.

Storengy designs, builds, operates and manages underground natural gas storage sites across France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The company develops new sites to satisfy client needs and encourages the growth of the European natural gas market. Storengy UK, Storengy Deutschland (Berlin, Germany), and Storengy France (Paris, France) are the three business units that manage the company's 16 natural gas storage sites in the three countries. With a total storage capacity of 11 billion cubic meters (388 billion cubic feet), Storengy is Europe's second-largest operator of natural gas storage facilities. The company's storage capacity accounts for 14% of Europe's total natural gas storage capacity.

The company has an underground storage capacity of 9.9 billion cubic meters spread across several sites in France. Storengy's German branch operates four storage facilities in Germany. In addition to the Stublach site, Storengy is developing other storage sites to meet the demands of the growing European natural gas market.

France will see the addition of two new underground storage facilities in the next decade. One facility will be at Hauterives in the Drôme department and connected to the Tersanne site, and the other will be developed at Trois-Fontaines-l'Abbaye in the Marne department in the Champagne-Ardenne region.

In January this year, Jacobs received an EPCM contract from Storengy for the renovation of an underground gas storage facility at Céré-la-Ronde in France. The project will increase the facility's capacity to up to 1.2 billion cubic meters. Other sites in France that are undergoing upgrades are Beynes, Etrez, Saint-Clair and Tersanne. In all the upgrade projects, electrical systems will replace the existing heat engine-powered compressors and effectively eliminate combustion emissions. All the projects are expected to be completed by 2012.

Capacity at Storengy's facility at Peckenson near Hanover in Germany is currently being expanded from the existing 60 million cubic meters to about 152 million cubic meters. Two more salt caverns have been identified and on commissioning, will add another 180 million cubic meters to the facility by 2014. Storengy Deutschland is continuously investigating depleted reservoir conversion projects and salt caverns in the country in an effort to create storage capacity of about 3 billion cubic meters by 2018.

Storengy is also exploring possible sites in the Larne Borough Council area in Ireland. The project is being implemented jointly with the Irish gas board Bord Gáis Éireann (Cork). The aim of the project at present is to determine the presence of subterranean salt layers in the area that could be used to develop underground natural gas storage facilities in future.

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