Novagas Canada Plans Immediate Construction Start for $97-Million Project

Novagas Canada Ltd. (NCL) will mobilize construction crews to begin work on a $97-million West Stoddart natural gas processing project northwest of Fort St. John, British Columbia. The company's announcement follows the award of a Project Certificate from the government of British Columbia, granting approval for the project to proceed.

The West Stoddart project includes a 160-million-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas processing plant and gathering lines; a 69-kilometer, 16-inch natural gas pipeline; and a parallel 6-inch natural gas liquids pipeline. Completion is scheduled for late summer 1998.

The West Stoddart facility is being developed primarily as a gas conservation plant to process raw sour gas associated with oil production from the Stoddart and Buick Creek fields. The plant will sweeten the gas recovered from oil production batteries operated by Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) and Remington Energy Ltd. The plant will also recover a portion of the hydrocarbon liquids in the gas stream.

Natural gas from the West Stoddart plant will then be transported by pipeline to the Younger natural gas processing plant at Taylor, B.C. NCL holds a 43.3 per cent interest in the soon-to-be-expanded Younger gas processing plant. The natural gas liquids will be further transported to NCL's liquids fractionation facility at Redwater-Fort Saskatchewan, near Edmonton, Alberta. The Redwater-Fort Saskatchewan facility, with a capacity of 65,000 barrels of natural gas liquids per day, is targeted to be on-stream in the fall of 1998.

Novagas Canada is a natural gas and natural gas liquids services company specializing in natural gas gathering and processing, and natural gas liquids extraction, transportation, fractionation, marketing and storage. NCL is owned by NOVA Gas International Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of NOVA Corporation of Calgary, Canada.

Edited by Beth Brindle