Wide Use For Maui Gas

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 44

Wide Use For Maui Gas

(New Zealand Press Association/ NEW PLYMOUTH, September 4. Gas from the Maui field, offshore from Taranaki, could be firing three or four thermal power-stations by the end of this century. This will depend primarily on whether negotiations between the Government and the Shell-BP-Todd consortium, over the price to be paid for natural gas from the Maui field, are successful.

The Acting Minister of Works (Mr Pickering) confirmed today that natural gas—if it is used—for a giant 1000-megawatt powerstation near Auckland would come from the Maui field.

Future power stations in the North Island would be fired by either gas or nuclear energy.

Natural gas, Mr Pickering said, would be cheaper and more economic than nuclear power, but he could not state definitely that further stations this century would be gas-fired. The general manager of the New Zealand Electricity Department, Mr E. B. Mackenzie, in an interview with the Taranaki “Daily News" today, said that this would mean a new pipeline, from the offshore field to Auckland. The pipe would be “much bigger” than that used to supply natural gas from Kapuni to Auckland and Wellington, he said. Mr Mackenzie, in his only comment on the future use of Maui gas, said if the price negotiated was acceptable, his department could “go beyond” the 1000-megawatt station for Auckland. If gas were used for the

600-megawatt New Plymouth power station and for the proposed Auckland one, Piping gas ashore from the Maui field would become an economic proposition, said Mr Mackenzie.