First gas production uncertain after Deep Panuke fire

Governmentregulatorssay bad weatherhas keptinvestigators away froma Nova Scotiaoffshore platform where fire broke out Saturdayandthe automatedfire suppression systemfailed.

Forty-six of the 115 peopleaboard the Deep Panuke natural gas production platformwere flown back to shore as a precautionary measure early Saturday morningfollowingan electrical fire.

"Staff are preparing to go offshoreonce weather permits travelto ensure that the investigation is done to the satisfaction of the board," said Tanya Taylor White, spokesperson for the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.

Calgary-basedEncana and SBM Offshorethe Dutch company it hiredto build, commissionand operatethe naturalgas platformare responsible forinvestigating thefire. The fire wascontained to anelectrical panel.

Both companies have expertson the platform, located about 250 kilometers southeast of Halifax on the Scotian Shelf.

"The goal is to get to the bottom of what happened," Encana spokesperson Lori Macleantold CBC News.

"Fundamentally,why was there a fire and beyond that, why the suppressionsystem did not engage as it should and how to fix it."

Although thefire suppressionsystem failed,crew were able to extinguish thefire. No one was hurt.

In an emailed responseto CBC News,Tanya Taylor White of the CNSOPB,saidworkers will be allowedto return,"After the investigation is complete and next steps are determined."

The companies looking intothe fireEncana and SBMare currently locked in a court battle, blaming each other for Deep Panuke's lengthy production delays.

The natural gas productionfacility is more than two years late andis hundredsof millions of dollars over the originalforecast.The platform wasin the process of final commissioningwhen the fire broke out.

Theproject received regulatory approval in 2007 and was initially supposed to go into production by late 2010. But last fall, SBM said Deep Panuke wouldn't start producing natural gas untilat least June 30.

MacLeansaidshe doesn't know what impact this setbackwill have on the productionof first gas, expected sometimein2013.

"It'sreally too early to say, in terms of impact, on that.The main thingright now is to focus on the investigation and to find out why this fire occurred, to get to the bottom of it, and to take the steps to address that," she said."That's where full effort is being placed right now."

This latest setback is potentially bad news for natural gas consumers, large and small, in Nova Scotia. The industry was counting on Deep Panuke gas.

Theplatform's delayhas already been partially blamed for a supply shortage that saw prices triple in Nova Scotia last month.