According to a Miami Herald report, Calypso Pipeline, an $800 million project that was slated to transfer gas from a port in Grand Bahama to Fort Lauderdale via the Gulf Stream, said good-bye to The Bahamas.
The company had already obtained its U.S. federal, state and local permits to go ahead with the project, but after waiting for nearly two years for Bahamian authorities to approve and furnish the company with the relevant documents to proceed with its work, Calypso simply grew impatient.
The company reportedly now has its sights set on a deep water port some 10 miles off Port Everglades. How that process would work is that ships would dock near buoys where they could connect to the pipeline and pump gas to Florida.
Although the company’s owners have been waiting for a permit for nearly two years, it has actually been in negotiations with the Bahamas government for the project for closer to four years. Dan McGinnis, an affiliate of the company was quoted as saying in the Miami Herald on Tuesday, “We have no indication from the government [of The Bahamas] of a timetable.”
For Calypso time really is money as Mr McGinnis told the Miami Herald, “We know there’s a huge demand in the United States for natural gas, and we want to respond to that as fast as possible.
As a result of The Bahamas deal falling through, the company’s owners have said its project would have to extend the date it had anticipated its operations would begin. The Miami Herald report indicated that pipeline officials were hopeful the project would be on stream sometime next year. However, because new regulatory approvals could take that long, the company is now looking to begin operations two or three years behind schedule in 2009 or 2010.
The company thought it would be easier to get The Bahamas to approve its plan to pipe gas to Florida according to the Miami Herald. The company and its affiliates wanted to avoid a drawn out approval process for a regasification plant with the U.S.
The Nassau Guardian
