Drilling work starts on £100m River Humber gas tunnel
- Published
A boring machine is working 35m below the river bed at Goxhill and will finish a year later in Paull
Drilling work has started on a £100m project to create a tunnel under the River Humber to carry "one fifth of the UK's gas supply" to millions of homes.
The three-mile long tunnel will house a new gas pipeline running between Goxhill in North Lincolnshire and Paull in East Yorkshire.
It is expected to take a year to build.
National Grid said it needed to replace the current pipeline, which is in "a trench just below the river bed and is at risk of being exposed" by the tides.
The boring machine has been named Mary by a schoolgirl who won a competition. The 500-tonne tool was designed and built in Germany
Steve Ellison, project manager at National Grid, said: "The pipeline connects Easington on the East Yorkshire coast where gas comes ashore, to the national network.
"It plays its part in delivering gas supplies to millions of customers throughout the UK regularly transporting between 70 million and 100 million cubic metres of natural gas per day. That's approximately 20% of the UK's peak winter demand."
A 160m-long (525ft) machine, which weighs 500 tonnes, is boring 35m (115ft) below the river bed at Goxhill to build the 4m-wide (13ft) tunnel.
It has been named "Mary" after British civil engineer Mary Fergusson, who became the first female fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in the 1950s.
Kacey Doney was invited, along with her family, to see "Mary" before work started underneath the River Humber
Engineers from National Grid ran a competition in schools in Goxhill and Paull last summer to name the machine. It was won by Kacey Doney, a pupil at Paull Primary School.
The eight-year-old said she came across the name after researching on the internet.
"I searched girl names, women's names for good things
"I read the message about [her] and then I just thought, Mary, that's all right," she said.
Facts and figures on the River Humber tunnel project