Officials: Energy Center is on schedule

MARQUETTE — The future energy needs for the City of Marquette are right on schedule according to officials with the Marquette Board of Light and Power.

At a special meeting of the Marquette BLP Tuesday night, executive director Paul Kitti said that Sargent and Lundy is getting ready to move on bids for the civil, mechanical and electrical work that’s needed to build the Marquette Energy Center.

Northern Natural Gas will supply the natural gas for a new three thousand foot pipeline that will feed the gas into the energy center.

“We anticipate that in early June we’re going to have contractors in here. We’ve got it laid down on site and we’re planning with Wartsila on delivery of the engines,” said Kitti.

“There’s really three parts to it,” said Jim Reynolds, a consultant on the Marquette Energy Center Project. “There’s Northern Natural Gas, the large transport company. There’s Semco, the local distribution company. And there’s the gas procurement part of it, which is another third part of this whole thing.”

Semco is in charge of building the new pipeline from the company’s gate station to the energy center.