Gas-fired Aussie power station to cross Tasman

Oil and gas explorer Greymouth Petroleum has bought a gas-fired Australian power station that it intends to move to New Zealand.

Privately-owned Greymouth, the second biggest New Zealand-owned explorer, said yesterday it had acquired the Windimurra power station and associated gas delivery assets in Western Australia for an undisclosed sum.

"New Zealand is becoming short of the flexible thermal power generating facilities that are required to sustain economic growth ... in periods of low hydro-lake levels and low renewable energy supply," chief executive Mark Dunphy said.

The Windimurra station, once used at a now closed vanadium mining project, consists of four gas-fired engines and can produce enough to power 16,000 homes. It is expected to be operational in New Zealand by late next year.

Greymouth said the purchase was part of its plan to become a low-cost integrated energy company and it intended investing in power facilities to meet anticipated growth.

"Greymouth plans to offer fixed price electricity and gas to the consumer markets, and will develop ventures with industry to achieve this objective," Dunphy said.

Future thermal power investments would use gas from fields being developed in Taranaki, where all of New Zealand's commercial oil and gas fields are sited.

Greymouth operates the Kaimiro oil and gas field, and has a programme of on-shore exploration.

- REUTERS