Weekly news round-up - 26 February 2014

Your rapid update on the week's infrastructure stories.

Thomas Paterson
26 February 2014
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  1. Heathrow Airport’s new Star Alliance Terminal 2B welcomed the world’s largest airliner last week to trial one of its new aircraft stands (see photo). The Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 docked at the largest airside construction project ever carried out at Heathrow. The scheme is being built by Balfour Beatty and provides 16 new aircraft stands, retail space and extensive basement space for future baggage handling and track transit systems. The terminal will be able to handle 20M passengers when it opens on 4 June. Architect is Grimshaws, structural consultant Mott MacDonald, M&E consultant is Parsons Brinckerhoff.

  2. London Array has cancelled plans to expand its Thames Estuary wind farm site with an extra 65 turbines saying planning rules requiring an assessment on the impact of the scheme on the red throated diver migratory bird would take too long. At Dogger Bank Forewind also announced it is to scale back its offshore wind plans by 20% to 7.2GW. Two other offshore wind farm developments have been cancelled in recent months – the Argyll Array and Atlantic Array.

  3. The UK up until last week had received 486.8mm of rain over the winter, narrowly above the previous record of 485.1mm set in 1995, according to the Met Office. Two severe flood warnings remain in place on the Somerset Levels. As of Tuesday there were also 22 flood warnings and 95 flood alerts across England, 2 flood alerts and 7 warnings in Scotland and none in Wales.

  4. Government has signed a deal with Shell for the first carbon capture scheme in the world at the Peterhead gas plant in Aberdeenshire. Peterhead is a combined cycle gas turbine station owned and operated by Scottish & Southern Energy. The project will capture more than 85% of the CO2 emission and transport them by pipeline to the Goldeneye platform in the North Sea for storage in a depleted gas reservoir 2.5km below the seabed.

  5. Local authorities will get an extra £30M to help repair roads damaged by the current flooding from central government. This is on top of the £3.5M transport element announced in the initial £7M flood recovery package in January. The Prime Minister has also given the go ahead for 10 rail resilience schemes costed at £31M.

  6. Meanwhile Department for Transport ministers visited a major rail slip at Botley in Hampshire where contractor Osborne has been celebrating the start of its new Wessex CP5 multi-functional renewals framework with Network Rail by working on repairs. The slip was caused by the recent torrential rain, which has affected three sections of the line between Portsmouth and Southampton, one section being up to 80m in length.  “The line has been shut for two weeks but will be back up and running during March,” said Osborne’s One Team Wessex Managing Director, John Dowsett. “We are bringing in 30,000t of new material to gain suitable access and totally rebuild long sections of the railway embankment.”

  7. Government is to adopt all the recommendations in a new report to reverse the decline in North Sea oil and gas production and maintain existing infrastructure in order to allow new resources to be accessed. Sir Ian Wood says in the report that the reforms could result in 3-4 billion barrels of oil being produces in the next 20 years, worth £200bn to the economy.

  8. Two new cities will be needed to provide homes for new migrants to the UK, according to research by the House of Commons Library. Estimates are that new migrants will form 629,000 new households based on net immigration running at 144,000 a year up to 2021.

  9. Herrenknecht has delivered the first of 15 tunnel boring machines for the Doha Metro in Qatar.

  10. Government has signed a deal with First Capital Connect to extend its operation of services on the Thameslink route by six months until the new franchise winner – Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern - takes up the reins.