Boom Times for Pipeline Builders

By Guy D. Garcia

Construction surges despite a glut in natural gas

Seen from an airplane, it looks like a giant scar stretching across the Great Plains and over the horizon. For much of last summer, however, the scene featured countless lengths of steel pipe lying like uncooked spaghetti beside deep ditches. Here and there clusters of yellow machines and men in hard hats or baseball caps could be seen, many of them bare-chested under the hot sun, some working under the shade of umbrellas attached to the pipes.

The work is now nearly finished, and the result is a 793-mile stretch of natural gas pipeline that extends eastward from Whitney Canyon, Wyo., to a terminal in Beatrice, Neb. There the pipeline will become a part of existing gas lines leading to the population and industrial centers of the East, delivering 350 million cu. ft. of fuel per day to customers by Oct. 15. Named Trailblazer, because it is the first major pipeline to transport gas from the Rocky Mountain Overthrust Belt in western Wyoming directly to the Midwest, the $1.4 billion, 36-in. line is the work of five different interstate gas-transmission companies--Colorado Interstate Gas Co., Columbia Gulf Transmission Co., Mountain Fuel Resources, Inc., Northern Natural Resources Co. and Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America. Together the firms already service one out of every four natural gas customers in the country. Their latest project is a part of what has become the biggest gas-pipeline building boom of its kind in the U.S. in 30 years.

From the dusty high plains of Montana to the fertile corn belt in eastern Iowa, workmen by the thousands have completed another and bigger project, the Northern Border Pipeline. The line reaches 823 miles from the Canadian border at Alberta to the Midwestern U.S., and by November will be transporting 975 million cu. ft. of fuel per day, or enough to heat 1.4 million homes in the dead of winter. Construction of the $1.1 billion system began in the spring of 1981, and has required on occasion as many as 5,000 hardhats and other workers, laboring at nine different sites along the route. Boasts Northern Border President William Henry: "This is the largest privately financed pipeline project ever undertaken, the largest of its kind in the free world."

Northern Border is only a segment of the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System, a mammoth four-pipeline network intended to make Alaska's vast natural gas reserves available to the rest of the U.S. Expected to be completed by the end of the decade, the system will provide the country with enough fuel to heat 4.5 million homes per day at peak capacity. Though the pipeline has been plagued by financing problems and construction start-up delays, it is seen by industry experts as an important complement to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which carries 1.5 million bbl. of crude oil per day from Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea to the port of Valdez, 800 miles to the south. All together, the entire gas-pipeline network is aimed at ensuring adequate fuel supplies for industrial and home-heating use until the turn of the century and beyond.

The nation's pipeline-building boom began taking shape some seven years ago, when wintertime gas shortages were commonplace and crude-oil prices had skyrocketed. With the start of phased natural gas deregulation under the Carter Administration in 1978 and the subsequent creeping rise in price, the industry experienced a boom in exploration and drilling activity. Investment in large-scale pipeline development naturally followed close behind.

The immediate question the companies now face is whether there will be enough demand by consumers for the gas. The sagging U.S. economy, combined with falling oil prices and increasing energy conservation by consumers and industry alike, has created an unexpected glut that is dampening sales. Even so, gas executives remain optimistic. Says George Morrow, president of Natural Gas Pipeline, which is managing partner for the project: "We are looking long term, at markets ten years and more down the road. A future shortage of domestic energy is inevitable, and I am bullish on gas. All is hardly gloom and doom." Observes Anthony Sousa, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: "The nation is currently experiencing a surplus of natural gas, but that surplus may prove temporary."

So far, construction of the pipelines has apparently had little negative impact on the environment, partly because the pipeline companies have gone out of their way to avoid criticism from ecological watchdogs. For example, to protect the prairie habitat of the rarely seen black-footed ferret, Northern Border engineers enforced a 15-mile "construction constraint" along one stretch of the line in the Dakotas in order to loop around certain prairie-dog towns, which the ferrets raid for prey. The company also held up work in several other sections for two weeks to avoid interfering with the nesting habits of prairie falcons.

Teams of company-hired archaeologists additionally spent a total of 16 months surveying Northern Border's entire right of way to locate areas of historical or archaeological significance. Some 171 such sites were identified, ranging from an ancient Dakota Indian camp to the remains of sod huts built by early white settlers. Minor reroutes were made to skirt the most important sites.

The companies have taken care to see that once a section of pipeline is completed and buried, typically to a minimum depth of 42 in., the surface is reseeded and restored for use as range or cropland the following season. Maintenance teams will be permanently based along the lines to inspect them periodically and guard against soil erosion by practicing terracing and other soil-conservation techniques. Says Robert Landers, a construction supervisor on the Trailblazer project: "We bury and hide our pipe with about the same care the Egyptians took in burying their pharaohs." Now the only thing the pipeline companies have to worry about is whether consumers can be counted on to buy up the prodigious amounts of fuel soon to be flowing silently eastward below ground. --By Guy D. Garcia. Reported by Lee Griggs/Omaha

With reporting by Lee Griggs

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