WINGAS and EWE inform locals about storage project

Basic operating plan approval already granted / preparations underway for construction start / community information office in Jemgum opens on May 20, 2008

Jemgum. The preparations for building the Jemgum cavern storage facility are up and running at full speed. Now that the responsible authority, the Lower Saxony State Office for Mining, Energy and Geology, has approved the basic operating plan and therefore the basic requirement for the joint storage project by EWE AG and WINGAS GmbH has been met, the necessary infrastructure for forming the individual caverns will be set up. “July 1 is the date set to get the work started,” announced WINGAS Project Manager, Arkadius Binia. Ralf Riekenberg, who coordinates the project for EWE, explained that the infrastructure for the solution-mining operation, including the water intake point on the Ems River and the brine transport line up to the discharge point in Ditzum, will be set up by March 2009. “The solution-mining process will then start, at which point the actual caverns will begin to form in the underground salt dome.”

In preparation for the future building activities, WINGAS and EWE will open a community information office in the town hall in Jemgum on May 20. Mr. Binia says: “First of all contact partners from both companies will be available to answer questions on the storage project every Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. until 12 midday.” Moreover on Wednesday, June 4, 2008, an information evening is planned for the citizens of Jemgum, whereby both the project and the work to be done will be presented in detail.

A solution-mining process of around two years is required to create a cavern. Pumping in the natural gas will then take another year. Altogether EWE and WINGAS plan to set up 33 caverns in the Jemgum salt dome. “We want to build 15 caverns with a volume of up to 700,000 cubic meters each,” explains EWE Project Manager Mr. Riekenberg. WINGAS will first set up 18 caverns with a geometric volume of up to 750,000 cubic meters. Arkadius Binia: “Our company’s storage facilities will then have a capacity of approximately 1.2 billion cubic meters.” The two storage facilities will actually be developed together, but operated separately by both companies after completion. Filling the caverns with gas will start in 2011; the storage facility operation is planned to start at the end of 2011.

European energy provider WINGAS GmbH is active in natural gas trading and distribution in Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark. Its customers include municipal utilities, regional gas suppliers, industrial firms and power plants. Since 1990 WINGAS has invested more than 3 billion euros in the development of a natural gas transport and storage infrastructure. WINGAS TRANSPORT pipeline network, which is over 2,000 kilometers long, connects the major gas reserves in Siberia and in the North Sea to the growing markets in Western Europe. In Rehden in North Germany, WINGAS has the largest natural gas storage facility in Western Europe – with a working gas volume of over four billion cubic meters, and the company also participates in Central Europe's second largest storage facility in Haidach, Austria. Additional natural gas storage facilities are currently being built in Great Britain and Germany in order to secure the supply of natural gas in Europe.

EWE AG is one of the biggest energy companies in Germany. One of its core competencies is the efficient management of complex power, natural gas and telecommunications networks. EWE offers its customers an extensive range of services in the energy, water, environment, building management, telecommunications and information technology areas. The company’s network areas include northwestern Lower Saxony between the Ems and the Elbe, parts of Brandenburg, northern Mecklenburg Western Pomerania and parts of Poland. Altogether more than a million electricity customers and 770,000 natural gas customers are catered for, and all of them profit from an electricity and natural gas network that has one of the lowest fault rates in the world. Subsidiaries are also active in other European countries, Poland and Switzerland, for example.

More information at: www.ewe.de

PI - 05/19/08

Contact:
Nicholas Neu
Phone: +49 561 301-3301
Fax: +49 561 301-1321
press@wingas.de

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further information

WINGAS operates in Rehden the biggest natural gas storage facility of Western Europe. In Jemgum WINGAS is constructing a cavern storage facility.
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