As of 1 August, HydroWingas will start gas deliveries to the British market. Just as agreements are negotiated with the first customers, the newly established company moves into new offices in Richmond outside of London.
"The first gas contract has been signed with the Devro company, located near Glasgow in Scotland," says deputy managing director Terje Totland in HydroWingas.
"We are presently in the final stages of negotiations on future gas deliveries with a number of other companies. Now that we have an end customer in place, we can test that all our systems work properly before the bulk of the deliveries starts in October," he continues.
The joint venture company HydroWingas was established by Hydro and Wingas in December 2003, with 50-50 ownership.
During the course of August, HydroWingas will move into new offices in Richmond, but even before the move, the company is marketing its deliveries to major industrial customers.
"The demand for natural gas is increasing, and we expect to sign several attractive sales contracts in the near future. In the next few years we will probably handle sales volumes of at least four billion cubic metres of gas a year," says Totland.
Deliveries to the UK will eventually be supplied from the Ormen Lange field in the Norwegian Sea through the pipeline Langeled, which will be laid from Aukra in Møre og Romsdal via the Sleipner platform in the North Sea to Easington in the UK.
HydroWingas has also acquired transport capacity in the pipeline Interconnector and in the planned BBL North Sea pipeline.