Groundbirch Plant Startup
Pengrowth’s Groundbirch team is excited to have achieved milestone in December -- namely the start-up of our new Groundbirch gas plant and associated wells.
The Groundbirch asset, located west of Dawson Creek, BC, was the cornerstone asset in Pengrowth’s Monterey Exploration acquisition that closed on September 15th of this year. The timeline for getting the Groundbirch plant and wells on production was very tight due to the need to be on-line prior to year-end 2010 to qualify for substantial BC royalty holidays.
As of the end of December, the plant had processed gas from the four wells that qualify for the royalty holiday and a fifth well is to be brought on production in the very near term. The start-up has been conducted incident free from a Health, Safety & Environmental perspective and the plant has performed well to date. The plant and wells will be slowly ramped up to expected rates of more than 20 million cubic feet per day which, to put into context, will be over 10 percent of our entire company's gas production.
