Halifax

Encana Corp.’s long awaited Deep Panuke project, 155 miles southeast of Halifax on the Nova Scotian Shelf, will begin shipping its first natural gas by the end of March, officials said last week.

Corridor Resources Inc. has begun the approval process to drill an exploration well on the Old Harry prospect in the Laurentian Channel, the Halifax, NS-based junior resource company said.

Plans for the MapleLNG liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, which was to be built east of Halifax, NS (see NGI, March 5, 2007), have been scrapped, the project’s backer said. And a Texas LNG terminal project backed by the same parent of MapleLNG appears to be dead in the water, too.

Plans for the MapleLNG liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, which was to be built east of Halifax, NS (see Daily GPI, March 10, 2008), have been scrapped, the project’s backer told local news media. And a Texas LNG terminal project backed by the same parent of MapleLNG appears to be dead in the water, too.

Repsol YPF SA has agreed to buy all of the gas production from EnCana Corp.’s Deep Panuke field offshore Halifax, NS. The gas will be delivered to markets in Eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, a Repsol spokesman told NGI.

Halifax-based Corridor Resources Inc. is holding a nonbinding open season through May 30 to solicit interest in its proposed Salt Springs Storage facility, which would be located near Sussex, NB. The facility would connect to the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline system. Corridor holds a provincial underground storage exploration license to investigate development its 15,000-plus hectare leasehold, which contains the Salt Springs salt deposit. McCulley Field, Corridor’s primary producing asset, is located on the leasehold. Salt Springs contains up to 2,200 feet of high-quality salt at depths ranging from 1,500 to 3,700 feet, and multiple caverns could be developed to store natural gas, liquefied petroleum gases (propane and butane), heating oil and crude oil, the company said. Details regarding the open season and an initial description of the proposed facilities and storage services to be offered may be found at www.corridor.ca.

EnCana Corp.’s revamped Deep Panuke natural gas project, which would be located about 250 kilometers offshore Halifax, received formal approval Tuesday by Nova Scotia and Canadian regulators even though the company has not yet decided whether to proceed.

Halifax, NS-based junior exploration and production company Corridor Resources Inc. applied to the New Brunswick Public Utilities Board (PUB) to construct and operate a pipeline connecting the McCully natural gas field in New Brunswick with Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline in order to bring McCully gas to the Maritimes provinces and New England.

Nova Scotia’s energy policy is outdated, said Larry Hughes, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax, citing a 60% collapse in estimated natural gas reserves offshore Nova Scotia last year to only 1.35 Tcf (from an original estimate of 3.5 Tcf), the production declines at the Sable Offshore Energy Project and the industry’s turn to liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.