Published: 12/4/2017 9:03:52 PM
Liberty Utilities wants to put a natural-gas pipeline along Route 101 from Manchester to Stratham and connect existing pipelines alongside Interstate 93 and Interstate 95, and also create a large gas storage facility in Epping.
The $340 million proposal, which the company is calling Granite Bridge, was announced Monday.
Liberty Utilities said it wants to build a tank that would store natural gas in liquid form near Route 101’s Exit 6 on a roughly 15-acre former quarry “within a 140-acre property in Epping that (Liberty Utilities) would purchase,” the company said.
The company said the tank could hold 2 billion cubic feet of liquid natural gas, or LNG. It would be 150 to 170 feet high and approximately 200 feet in diameter.
A tank of that size would raise the total LNG storage capacity in New England by 10 percent, according to data from ISO-New England.
Increasing the amount of natural gas available in New England in winter, when the fuel is often used for home heating instead of running power plants, is one of ISO-NE’s key goals to stabilize the power grid. Natural gas is used to create about half of all the electricity in New England.
By connecting two major transmission pipelines, the 27-mile Granite Bridge pipeline would allow gas stored in the LNG tank to be quickly moved west, to Manchester and up to Concord, or east, to the Seacoast and down to Boston.
Liberty Utilities was a partner of the failed effort by Kinder Morgan to build a major gas trasmission pipeline through southern New Hampshire. That project drew considerable opposition in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and it was scuttled due to lack of long-term contracts to support the billion-dollar cost.
The company’s press release and information about the proposal can be seen at granitebridgenh.com.