GUYSBOROUGH: The warden for the Municipality of the District of Guysborough (MODG) says with what’s going on in Ukraine, things are looking up on their end in terms of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Calgary-based Pieridae Energy Ltd. walked away from their original plans for a land-based Goldboro LNG facility last summer as they highlighted cost pressures and issues surrounding financing.
“We were very disappointed, but we basically have no skin in the game, we had sold them the property previous to that,” Vernon Pitts said. “They still own the property; I still have faith that something is going to take place over there.”
Following the municipality’s regular monthly council meeting on March 16, Pitts told The Reporter that with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s interest in obtaining gas outside of Russian sources has increased.
“Our residents here, the municipality, we’re attuned to fossil fuels, in regards to oil and natural gas, hence the Sable project,” he said. “It’s something we can do.”
A report from CBC earlier this month, advised the Goldboro LNG project could be revived as a floating barge while demand grows for non-Russian gas.
“If you can end up in a roundabout way putting less pollution into the atmosphere, that’s a plus, everybody wins,” Pitts said of the new, smaller proposed project. “
Pitts suggested with the infrastructure already in place, and the pipeline already stopping there, why not take advantage of and enhance the existing site, using a transitional fuel.
“We can take people off of coal and get them onto natural gas until they get onto solar or wind,” Pitts said. “And I think that’s a positive.”
The barge would no longer require a 5,000-person camp during construction, it would produce 400 million cubic feet of gas daily, about half of what the land-based site would have and would omit 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) each year, down from the three million tonnes estimated for the land-based site.
During a March 2 meeting, council passed a motion supporting Pieridae’s new proposal.
“I thought it was a good project when it was first proposed,” Pitts said. “And I still think it’s a good project today.”