CLP Power had insisted it could not meet the government's 2010 targets - agreed with Guangdong - for reducing air pollution. Now the electricity generator says it can - providing its planned liquefied natural gas terminal is approved in double-quick time.
The LNG terminal, which the company proposes to build either adjoining its power plant at Black Point in the southwestern New Territories, or on the Soko Islands off Lantau, is needed to replace gas supplies from a Hainan field, which the company two years ago said had smaller reserves than first believed.
Declining gas supplies had led the company to mothball much of its gas-fired generating capacity and it is instead burning more coal, thereby worsening air pollution.
The company has said the LNG terminal could only come on stream in 2011, since construction work would take four years. Now it says the facility could begin receiving LNG tankers in 2010 if the government approves the plans in one year instead of the two years normally required. For that to happen, the government would, by the end of next year, have to approve an environmental impact study - to be completed in the middle of next year - consult the public about the plan, grant land and approve financing for the project, expected to cost $6.5 billion.
Betty Yuen So Siu-mai, CLP Power's managing director, explained the change by saying the company had been too conservative with its project schedule and had now adjusted its projections based on more realistic estimates.
She denied its proposal to bring forward the LNG project was intended as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the government on the future of the regulatory regime for power generators once the scheme of control expires in 2008.
