Easington Gas Terminal

The Easington Gas Terminal is one of three main gas terminals in the UK, and is situated on the North Sea coast at Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire and Dimlington. The other two terminals are in Aberdeenshire and Norfolk.

History

It opened in March 1967. This was the first time that North Sea Gas had been brought ashore in the UK. The Dimlington site opened in October 1988. Since October 2006, gas has been brought into the UK direct from the Norwegian Sleipner gas field via the Langeled pipeline, the world's longest subsea pipeline owned by Gassco which itself is owned by the Kingdom of Norway.

Operation

The sites are run by and the gas is produced by BP, although gas is eventually transferred to a separate Centrica Storage plant at Easington, who control the UK mainland gas network.

Centrica Rough Terminal and Langeled Receiving Facilities

The Langeled pipeline, which is controlled at the UK end by Centrica, can transfer up to 2500m cubic feet of gas per day from Nyhamna in Norway. The Rough Field is a depleted offshore gas field that is used for storage by Centrica, and the Rough Terminal receives gas from the Amethyst gasfield which was until 1988 owned by Britoil.

BP Easington

The gas is collected from the Hyde, Hoton, Newsham and West Sole natural gas fields. It can process up to 300m cubic feet of gas per day.

BP Dimlington

Dimlington is the larger site of the two. The natural gas condensate is transferred to the Dimlington terminal. Dimlington also processes dry gas from the (former) Cleeton, Ravenspurn South, Ravenspurn North, Johnston, the Easington Catchment Area (Neptune and Mercury), and the Juno development (Whittle, Wollaston, Minerva and Apollo) gas fields. The Dimlington site has the control room for all of BP's gas fields that ship gas to the Easington site. Dimlington can handle up to 950m cubic feet of gas per day.

Fire risk

All three sites are a considerable fire hazard, so both have large water reservoirs for fire fighting containing about one million and three million litres of water each.

Close to the north is the Out Newton [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/40960 wind farm] .

ee also

* List of oil and gas fields of the North Sea
* St. Fergus Gas Plant

External links

* [http://www.centrica-sl.co.uk Centrica Storage]
* [http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/U/uk_asset_easington.pdf BP Asset Portfolio]
* [http://www.bpnsi.com/index.asp?id=7369643D312669643D3137 Gas terminals at BP North Sea Infrastructure]
* [http://www.humberchemicalfocus.com/download_library/pdf/CentricaBPexploration.pdf Emergency advice for residents of Easington]

News items

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7417992.stm World War Two bomb found in March 2008]