Power plan cancelled due to ‘market conditions’

A NEW combined heat and power station which was due to be built at a Milford Haven gas storage plant has been cancelled.

The company behind the scheme, a joint venture involving Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil and Elf Petroleum UK, has told Milford Haven Town Council it is pulling out of the project due to “challenging market conditions”, the BBC reported.

The project at South Hook, which would have had a generating capacity of 500MW, had been approved by the UK Government.

It was granted planning consent in October 2014 but in February last year the project was deferred.

The project, which was next to the existing South Hook Liquefied Natural Gas terminal, was expected to create up to 600 jobs during construction with 30 permanent jobs at the site.

In an email to the council the company said the power station was being cancelled “in the light of current market conditions and the international competition for project funding”.

“The decision not to proceed with the South Hook CHP Project was a difficult one for the shareholders to make and reflects the fact that in the light of today’s market conditions all discretionary major investments have to be rigorously appraised,” it added.

A spokesman for the company said that stakeholders had been told earlier this month but that “events had moved on”.

The spokesman added: “It would be inappropriate to comment further.