Page 10 - AsianOil Week 28
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AGN outlines South Australian gas grid expansion plans
PIPELINES & TRANSPORT
AUSTRALIAN Gas Networks (AGN) has unveiled plans to invest around AUD580mn ($404.8mn) in the South Australian natural gas grid over the next ve years.
AGN, a division of Australian Gas Infra- structure Group (AGIG), said on July 10 that it intended to replace 860 km of pipeline – including its all of its cast iron mains – and connect 39,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers.
AGN’s proposed investment is part of a wider development plan for the state’s gas distribution network between nancial year 2021-2022 and 2025-2026. e plan, which has been submitted to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), also aims to implement an upfront price cut of 7% from July 1, 2021 for 460,000 customers.
Commenting on the development of the plan, AGIG CEO Ben Wilson said the company had held more than 20 workshops seeking feedback from residential and busi- ness customers.
He said: “We are planning to blend renew- able gas into our networks, with these low car- bon initiatives being strongly supported by our customers.”
AGIG aims to feed green hydrogen into the network from its pilot Hydrogen Park South Australia (HyP SA) project that is currently under-developed in Adelaide. The company said on July 9 that work had begun to install a Siemens 1.25 MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser at the AUD11.4mn ($8mn) plant, which will produce up to 480kg per day of hydrogen. e facility, which is due to come online before the end of the year, will use renew- able power sources to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas, with the latter to be blended with natural gas and fed into the existing gas grid.
AGN said it wanted to expand current network service beyond the Adelaide metropolitan area, Mount Gambier, Port Pirie, Whyalla and the Riv- erland to include the Mount Barker region.
e company said it had connected 40,000 new customers and replaced 1,000 km of gas mains since the start of the current five-year period in 2016. AGN expects the AER to deliver a dra decision on its plan later this year.
AGIG, which was formed in 2017 from the merger of AGN, Dampier to Bunbury Pipeline (DBP) and Multinet Gas Networks’ (MGN) dis- tribution, transmission and storage assets, is one of the country’s largest gas providers.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 28 16•July•2020
