The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) will pur­chase gas from the Cas­cadu­ra field, fol­low­ing a gas sales con­tract pre­vi­ous­ly signed with Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration.

On Thurs­day, Touch­stone an­nounced that it de­liv­ered its first gas from the Cas­cadu­ra field on Sep­tem­ber 6.

NGC, in a news re­lease yes­ter­day, said this mile­stone was dou­bly im­por­tant for NGC as the com­pa­ny was re­spon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of as­so­ci­at­ed in­fra­struc­ture that fa­cil­i­tat­ed the tie-in of the Cas­cadu­ra fa­cil­i­ty to the do­mes­tic net­work.

“The project en­tailed de­sign, pro­cure­ment, con­struc­tion, and com­mis­sion­ing of 1.6-km, 20-inch buried nat­ur­al gas pipeline with as­so­ci­at­ed pig launch­er and pig re­ceiv­er sta­tions at the ends of the pipeline, to tie the Cas­cadu­ra wells in­to NGC’s ex­ist­ing 30-inch on­shore nat­ur­al gas trans­mis­sion pipeline. This in­fra­struc­ture can take up to 220 MM­scfd of dry nat­ur­al gas from the Or­toire block,” said the whol­ly state-owned nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny.

In giv­ing more in­sight in­to the project NGC said con­struc­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by NGC in Sep­tem­ber 2022 and com­plet­ed in Ju­ly 2023, fol­lowed by com­mis­sion­ing and start-up in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

“This project was planned and safe­ly ex­e­cut­ed us­ing NGC’s in-house teams, util­is­ing 100 per cent lo­cal con­tent, and demon­strat­ed NGC’s tech­ni­cal ser­vices ca­pa­bil­i­ty, re­silience, and ex­e­cu­tion agili­ty. The project was com­plet­ed with­in its planned sched­ule and bud­get. Un­der a gas sales con­tract signed with Touch­stone in 2020, NGC will pur­chase gas pro­duced from the Cas­cadu­ra field to meet its do­mes­tic sup­ply oblig­a­tions,” It ex­plained.

Com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment, NGC Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan stat­ed, “This week marked the cul­mi­na­tion of many months of ded­i­cat­ed work to pre­pare for the de­liv­ery of the first gas from Cas­cadu­ra.

Giv­en the sup­ply chal­lenges we face as a ma­tur­ing en­er­gy province, it is promis­ing to see pro­duc­tion ramp­ing up from on­shore fields.

“Af­ter the Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty de­liv­ered its first gas in Oc­to­ber 2022, this is the sec­ond gas de­vel­op­ment in the Or­toire block, and we con­grat­u­late Touch­stone and Her­itage on the Joint Ven­ture Part­ner ef­forts. We al­so thank our in­ter­nal teams for their hard work and sac­ri­fices to de­liv­er on mile­stones and sup­port the re­al­i­sa­tion of this im­por­tant project.”