Dominion, Statoil Sign Contract For
Cove Point Expansion
RICHMOND, Va. - Dominion (NYSE: D) and Statoil ASA (NYSE:
STO) today announced agreement on a 20-year contract giving Statoil access to
increased capacity at the Dominion Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant in
Maryland. The two companies had signed a letter of intent in February.
Plans call for increasing the plant's capacity from 1 billion
cubic feet per day to 1.8 Bcf per day and its storage capacity from 7.8 Bcf
to 14.6 Bcf by 2008. The project also includes associated pipeline and natural
gas storage projects in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Construction of new LNG storage tanks would begin as soon
as regulatory approval is received and will take about three years to complete.
New pipelines in Maryland and Pennsylvania will be timed to go into service
no later than the completion of the new LNG facilities, which is anticipated
to be in late 2008.
Dominion purchased the LNG
terminal at Cove Point in 2002 and successfully reopened it in the summer
of 2003. The plant is located on the Chesapeake Bay, south of Baltimore.
Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers of energy,
with a portfolio consisting of more than 24,000 megawatts of generation, 6.4
trillion cubic feet equivalent of natural gas reserves, 7,900 miles of natural
gas transmission pipeline and more than 960 billion cubic feet of storage capacity.
Dominion also serves five million retail energy customers in nine states.
Additional information about Dominion is available on the
Internet at www.dom.com.
