Maori trust, Mighty River announce plan for power

By CHRIS DANIELS

As the nation looks for more sources of electricity generation, development of a new geothermal field has been unveiled.

State-owned Mighty River Power has signed an agreement with the Putauaki Trust, which has more than 500 shareholders and owns and manages 1150ha of land near Kawerau.

Mighty River will start working out how much power a geothermal station on the field could generate, but early findings show that up to 100MW could be available. The Huntly power station can produce 1000MW.

Construction would unlikely to start before the end of next year with generation capacity on stream in 2006.

The Putauaki Trust said in a statement the development of sustainable geothermal energy had benefits for the Eastern Bay of Plenty and all of New Zealand. "This is a natural resource with which we are blessed and now is the right time to start using it in a responsible way."

Mighty River chief executive Doug Heffernan said he was delighted the trust had chosen the company as a partner.

Initial work would focus on learning about the field and its capacity, and getting resource consents was likely to take time.

Mighty River already runs a geothermal station at Mokai near Taupo, owned by the Tuaropaki Trust, which has 1700 beneficiaries.

Energy Minister Pete Hodgson this week said the Crown would transfer some of its central North Island geothermal bores to Mighty River Power. None of these are being used to produce electricity, though some supply steam to industry.