Client News-GATEWAY SECURES FIRST GAS STORAGE LICENCE FROM UK DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Monday, February 15th 2010

GATEWAY SECURES FIRST GAS STORAGE LICENCE FROM UK DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The £600m Gateway Gas Storage project has today received the first gas storage licence to be issued by the UK Government under a new regime designed to encourage the construction of new storage facilities in this country. The licence has been issued under the auspices of the 2008 Energy Act and it consolidates the main environmental and planning consents that were given to the project by the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the UK Marine & Fisheries Agency in November 2008.

George Grant, Chairman of Gateway Storage Company said: “The support and encouragement given by DECC to bring the Gateway Storage project forward has been invaluable, as was the Crown Estate’s agreement of the offshore site licence. We are now fully engaged with the project’s engineering design and are targeting 2014 for the start of commercial storage operations.”

The Gateway facility will add new capacity equal to approximately 30% of current UK storage capacity, sufficient to meet five days of Britain’s average gas demand. Gateway will be built in 20 salt caverns, each the size of the Albert Hall, and sited approximately 750m beneath the surface of the seabed. Located 15 miles offshore, south west of Barrow-in-Furness, the storage scheme will be connected to the National Gas Transmission System via a new pipeline to a gas compression station adjacent to the existing Morecambe gas terminals at Barrow.

Last month (January 21st 2010), Gateway announced that AMEC, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Senergy had been appointed to undertake the detailed engineering design work for both the offshore and onshore elements of the scheme. Their work will support a commitment to construction of the facility at the end of this year (2010) and enable the commencement of gas storage services for the UK market in 2014.


Notes to Editors:

1. The Energy Act 2008 created a regulatory framework in which DECC operates a licensing system that regulates storage for environmental and other purposes whilst the Crown Estate controls the exclusive rights to the seabed and the use of geological structures beneath the seabed for gas storage.

2. Gateway Storage (www.gatewaystorage.co.uk) is a company that was formed to develop the gas storage project and is managed by Stag Energy. Stag Energy (www.stagenergy.com) is an independent company, headquartered in Edinburgh. The company, established in 2002, has extensive experience of managing the development, construction and operations of gas storage and power generation projects in the UK and overseas.

For further information:

Gateway Storage Company Ltd

Andrew Stacey / George Grant

T: +44 (0)131 550 3380

E : astacey@stagenergy.com

ggrant@stagenergy.com

or

Paul Taylor (Taylor Keogh Communications)

T: +44 (0) 20 3170 8465

E: paul@taylorkeogh.com