Oil and gas explorer InfraStrata plans to fund preliminary work on a £300million gas storage project at Islandmagee, Northern Ireland, via a share offering later this month.
The placement is expected to raise £2million and will go ahead on the London Exchange on February 24 if the company’s shareholders approve the move at a meeting the day before.
The European Union-backed project is being managed by Belfast-registered Islandmagee Storage Limited (IMSL), a joint venture between InfraStrata, which holds 65%, and Moyle Energy Investments, which owns the remaining 35%.
IMSL plans to create seven caverns with a storage capacity of 500million cubic metres of gas about a mile beneath Larne Lough – enough gas to satisfy Northern Ireland’s demand for about 60 days.
Islandmagee, a peninsula on the east coast of Antrim that shelters Larne Lough, is home to Northern Ireland’s main power station, Ballylumford, and is the terminating point of the Scotland-Northern Ireland gas pipeline.
IMSL was granted planning permission for the project in 2012, much to the ire of environmentalists and local politicians, who fear that the firm’s intention to pump brine out to sea from the excavated caverns will pollute and poison marine and bird life.
The company says that protecting the marine environment around Islandmagee has always been one of its key concerns.
The project gained the support of the European Commission, which in August 2014 agreed to stump up £1.9million for the drilling and testing of a first well, Islandmagee-1, if IMSL can match the sum.