ABP has signed a 15-year contract with Drax to handle wood pellets for the power station at Selby, where three coal-fired generating units are being converted to burn biomass.
The project will create about 100 jobs in the construction phase and more than 100 permanent jobs once all of the discharge and storage facilities are fully operational at the three Humber ports.
A dedicated import facility, the Immingham Renewable Fuels Terminal, will handle panamax bulk carriers importing up to 3m tonnes of pellets a year. The investment will include new quayside discharge equipment and storage silos with capacity of up to 100,000 tonnes. From these silos, the wood pellets will be loaded on specialist rail wagons for the journey to Selby.
At Hull, dedicated equipment and storage facilities will handle up to 1m tonnes of biomass, also heading to Drax by rail, and at Goole, the inland port just seven miles from the power station, ABP will be investing in warehousing to handle the increased imports of biomass.
ABP also has a proposed £200m development lined up at Hull for an offshore wind turbine facility, and is providing facilities for wind farm operations and maintenance (O&M) bases at Grimsby.
James Cooper, ABP’s newly appointed chief executive, said the new investments look set to secure the Humber region’s position as “a centre of excellence for the development of the low carbon energy future”.
The Humber is only one region with such aspirations, of course. Hopes for new business generated by the offshore wind farm boom and also a new North Sea “gas rush” attracted more than 500 delegates to a Southern North Sea 2013 conference organised by the Great Yarmouth-based East of England Energy Group (EEEGR).
While Great Yarmouth is well established as a support base for the offshore oil & gas sector over more than four decades, there are those of the opinion that the town and surrounding area didn’t move fast or furiously enough back in the 1970s and therefore didn’t grab its fair share of the oil & gas action compared with Aberdeen. With the UK’s Round 3 offshore wind developments on the horizon, there is a determination not to let anything get away this time.
East Anglian businesses and authorities need to take a Houston, Texas-style ‘true-grit’ approach to grasp the opportunities, according to one speaker at the EEEGR conference. He compared the region’s resources to those of Houston which, he said, had no more oil and gas than that off Norfolk.
He called for a more aggressive and progressive attitude, particularly on infrastructure, and compared the two-lane “Acle Straight” road (complete with cattle warning signs) to Great Yarmouth port with the eight-lane highway to the Port at Galveston in Texas.
Hopefully no one would allow an eight-lane highway to cut through the peaceful countryside of East Anglia, but his comments certainly reflect the “gloves off” approach as ports seek to make the most of the spin-offs from the green revolution.
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