Agricultural

While still holding out the carrot of a possible 40-well, 3 Tcf natural gas play in the agricultural fields west of the central California valley town of Delano, Tri-Valley Corp. of Bakersfield announced that it has a letter of intent to sign a deal with an unnamed, privately held international energy company that wants to develop the prospective gas field in conjunction with building a baseload merchant electric generating plant. Tri-Valley called the field its Sunrise Natural Gas Project.

While still holding out the carrot of a possible 40-well, 3 Tcf natural gas play in the agricultural fields west of the central California valley town of Delano, Tri-Valley Corp. of Bakersfield announced Wednesday that it has a letter of intent to sign a deal with an unnamed, privately held international energy company that wants to develop the prospective gas field in conjunction with building a baseload merchant electric generating plant. Tri-Valley called the field its Sunrise Natural Gas Project.

A new nonutility natural gas supply network and someenvironmental concessions to local agricultural interests are twonew twists to a major 500 MW merchant natural gas-fired power plantproposed for northern California in proximity to the SacramentoValley gas fields. As a result, the project sponsor, CalpineCorp., has agreed to invest an additional $20-$25 million in theestimated $300 million project to use a more environmentally benignair cooling system at the plant instead of the traditionalwater-based evaporative cooling approach.

A new nonutility natural gas supply network and someenvironmental concessions to local agricultural interests are twonew twists to a major 500 MW merchant natural gas-fired power plantproposed for northern California in proximity to the SacramentoValley gas fields. As a result, the project sponsor, CalpineCorp., has agreed to invest an additional $20-$25 million in theestimated $300 million project to use a more environmentally benignair cooling system at the plant instead of the traditionalwater-based evaporative cooling approach.