Westcoast Energy CEO Michael Phelps told Reuters news serviceafter a New York investors conference yesterday that he expectsMaritimes & Northeast gas volumes to triple in five years tomore than 1.6 Bcf/d.

He said Maritimes fully expects to be the gas transporter forPanCanadian’s Deep Panuke field, a big new project offshore NovaScotia. PanCanadian announced plans to move forward on the projectlast week. Deep Panuke contains at least 1 Tcf of reserves and isexpected to produce about 400 MMcf/d by 2005.

At an energy conference hosted by FirstEnergy Capital Corp. inNew York, Phelps said the Deep Panuke gas was Maritimes’ to losebecause building a new pipeline would be much too expensive. TheDeep Panuke project is in very close proximity to the SableOffshore Energy Project, which currently provides all the gastransported on Maritimes & Northeast.

However, the Sable partners also plan to increase gasproduction. Adding Deep Panuke probably would require additionalpipeline as well as compression. Maritimes currently ships about550 MMcf/d of gas to the U.S. Northeast.

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. Thepreceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, inwhole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent ofIntelligence Press, Inc.