Natural Gas Company to Acquire Salem Station
Pending regulatory approvals, Footprint Power will acquire Salem Harbor Power Station, remediate the site and build a natural gas plant.
A New Jersey company has signed an agreement with Dominion to take control of Salem Harbor Power Station, remediate the site and build a natural gas plant.
The announcement from Footprint Power LLC came Friday, according to a press release.
The coal-fired Salem Harbor Power Station owned by Virginia based Dominion is currently slated to close by June 1, 2014. Two units were reportedly retired in December 2011.
Footprint's new "state-of-the-art natural-gas-fired power plant" will be built on one third of the 63-acre site and could start as a power supplier by 2016, according to the press release. The City has been working on its vision for the rest of the site, and has presented study plans in public meetings.
The Salem Harbor Power Station acquisition will be Footprint's first.
"We are thrilled that many months of negotiations and hard work with Dominion have allowed us to reach this milestone today," CEO Peter Furniss said in a press release. "Salem has long been our company's first choice for an initial project. It is a perfect opportunity for us to work with a dedicated and professional workforce, an engaged community and the committed elected officials who serve it to add responsible and respectful development to the economic base in order to further strengthen this vibrant city."
Furniss also said he is dedicated to working closely with residents as Footprint develops its plan.
Michael McNeil
1:17 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Great news. Natural gas is clean and America has lots of it.
Edward
3:21 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Cool logo they have, a green foot! :)
john
6:00 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Won't be long before the Mheaders start complaining about this.
Richard
6:42 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
It's great news for Dominion since they get a big liability off their books - not such much for Salem though.
The buyer isn't a power company.They've never built a power plant, and don't have the capital to build one. They're lawyers who specialize in helping power companies avoid the cost of remediation by transferring ownership of old plants with large potential cleanup liabilities to corporate structures with limited assets. According to their web site "where shut-down is deemed the best approach for a facility, we have developed a proprietary model for capturing the remaining value of the plant while moving the bulk of the environmental liabilities off of the owner’s books."
In other words, set up an LLC with limited assets, transfer ownership to it, capture the value by selling off the assets (in this case the adjoining land), and then call it a day. Footprint makes a profit, Dominion clears their liability. Everybody wins. Except Salem.
john
7:49 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
What about the contamination? How is there any value until it is cleaned? I will bet that you are wrong.A gas plant makes sense,we will see.
Richard
10:39 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Only some of the 63 acres may be contaminated, although it's possible that all of it is. I hope you're right about the plant, but I think that if the economics worked in that location Dominion would have built it. It costs about $700 million to build a gas plant that size, which would have been no problem for Dominion, but is a major issue for company as
small as Footprint.
john
9:39 pm on Saturday, June 30, 2012
Dominion already unloaded the ferry land to the city.I find it hard to believe that the land on Blaney St (100yds from a 40 year coal pile and those oil tanks) is not dirty.Footprint needs to make this land produce long term income in order to realize a profit after the clean up.
windpower
10:06 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
What HAPPENED TO THE $200,000 STUDY What a joke .!
john
10:35 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Like the study that said put meters at Steves? We pay for this stuff?
Jared Robinson
9:31 am on Saturday, June 30, 2012
so... if this goes through, does the city get the same kind of kickback they were getting from Dominion? (I know kickback isn't the correct word... I just don't know what is...)
john
11:43 am on Saturday, June 30, 2012
They would pay much less in taxes than Dominion
Whitney Harris
10:52 am on Saturday, June 30, 2012
That's great! Jobs and property taxes for salem. And clean energy from Natural gas.
Maura
7:31 am on Sunday, July 1, 2012
Natural gas is not clean. This is from the EPA site:
Air Emissions
At the power plant, the burning of natural gas produces nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, but in lower quantities than burning coal or oil. Methane, a primary component of natural gas and a greenhouse gas, can also be emitted into the air when natural gas is not burned completely. Similarly, methane can be emitted as the result of leaks and losses during transportation...
Water Resource Use
The burning of natural gas in combustion turbines requires very little water. However, natural gas-fired boiler and combined cycle systems do require water for cooling purposes. When power plants remove water from a lake or river, fish and other aquatic life can be killed, affecting animals and people who depend on these aquatic resources...
Cwheels
11:30 am on Sunday, July 1, 2012
The EPA is a joke. I'm more concerned about the process of extracting the NG from the ground then the burning of it, Fracking is a nasty process's.
Hopefully the NG plant will be built and the mention of more light industrial / manufacturing on site in their PR would be a good thing for Salem.
chester suchecki
12:23 pm on Monday, July 2, 2012
THE POWER PLANT HAS BEEN USING SALEM HARBOR FOR COOLING WATER FOR 60 YEARS WITH NO REAL ILL EFFECTS.
Michael McNeil
8:07 am on Sunday, July 1, 2012
Please don't trust todays EPA. It is made up of radical propagandists.
Al Gorons.