After about a year of nibbles, the Canadian industry isbeginning to bite on a new ocean transportation technology beingdevised to speed up exploitation of natural gas reserves at remotelocations, led by the country’s Atlantic reserves.

Canadian Imperial Venture Corp., a small but ambitiousindependent from the Newfoundland capital of St. John’s, formed apartnership to develop, market and license the new approach for usein Atlantic Canada with its inventors. The technique — devised inthe Canadian gas capital of Calgary by Wild Rose Holdings Ltd.,also known as Cran & Stenning Technology, an engineering house— applies container-shipping methods to gas.

The partners say “representative tariffs” for using the newsystem in its present state of development to deliver gas fromreserves 180 miles out to sea on the Grand Banks of Newfoundlandare US$1.40 per Mcf to reach Boston, 90 cents to get to Nova Scotiaand 65 cents to the Newfoundland coast. The estimates are based onachieving a volume of 300 MMcf/d using a fleet of seven shipscarrying the new invention — “coselles” or coiled carouselcontainers, each made from nine miles of 6.6-inch-diameter pipewound tightly into a package 50 feet across, 11 feet tall andstuffed with 3.09 MMcf of gas compressed at 3,000 pounds per squareinch.

While Canadian Imperial is little known beyond Newfoundland, ithas connections. The firm is partners with PanCanadian Petroleumand Hunt Oil Overseas Operating in a development play on land andoffshore along Newfoundland’s western coast. This trio also hassecured an open-ended supply and service agreement with the BakerHughes organization for future projects.

The coselle technology, devised by Calgary engineers James Cranand David Stenning, likewise has attracted some others. EnronTransportation Services Ltd. has a piece of the patent andlicensing action. The joint venture with Canadian Imperial followsa lengthy study by an eight-member group including BGInternational, BHP, Chevron, Conoco, Fluor Daniel, ExxonMobil,McDermott and Shell. On the Grand Banks and farther north alongthe Labrador coast, the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore PetroleumBoard currently estimates gas reserves at 9.3 Tcf. While the newtechnology’s sponsors set no target dates for building a fleet ofcoselle ships, they say studies so far continue to indicate it is alive and better alternative to pipelines with chances of being putinto use much sooner. Among the group that participated in theextended technical study, Newfoundland representatives ofExxonMobil — the biggest owner of drilling rights in AtlanticCanada — have described the system as displaying good potential.

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