St. Joseph Energy Center – artist’s rendering (click for larger version)
For years there had been a plan to build a new natural gas-fired electric plant near the town of New Carlisle, Indiana. The original plan, called the St. Joseph Energy Center, was to build a $500 million, 700-megawatt plant, to be fed by gas “coming from Canada, the West and the Gulf of Mexico.” The plant had a groundbreaking this spring. However, plans are changing. The developer wants to double the size of the plant to 1,400 megawatts. There has been no mention of Marcellus/Utica gas feeding the plant, but our own speculation is that a lot has changed since this plant was first planned. One of the big changes has been a reversal of the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline, owned by Tallgrass, which now flows gas from the Marcellus/Utica west to Illinois (right through Indiana) delivering northeast gas to the Greater Chicago area, where this plant will be built. So that has MDN wondering if the St. Joseph Energy Center will get some yummy northeast gas to power it (the reason why we’re highlighting this story)…
