JUDGMENT will be released on Thursday August 31 on the four-day judicial review into a proposed underground gas storage facility in Islandmagee.
The outcome is being seen as significant in that it is the first time the courts in Northern Ireland have been asked to consider such a complicated environmental and economic argument.
Harland & Wolff Group Holdings plc owns Islandmagee Energy Limited (IMEL), which is behind the proposed gas storage scheme, which has previously been approved.
It says the “pioneering facility” - which features seven salt caverns capable of storing up to half a billion cubic metres of gas in salt beds 1,500 metres below Larne Lough - will provide safe, secure and flexible storage for 25 per cent of the UK's natural gas needs.
But environmental campaigner Friends of the Earth, which brought the judicial review along with local campaign group No Gas Caverns, has described the scheme as a “hugely damaging fossil fuel development” which it argued will create a “dead zone” where no marine life could survive.
H&W, in a statement, said: “A further announcement will be made once the company has formally received the judgment.”
The judicial review hearing in Belfast sought to overturn a decision by former Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) minister Edwin Poots to originally authorise the construction of the gas storage facility.
